As the Clock Ticks Round
by 96 Hubbles
Summary: A random series of short pieces centred around Merlin's wait and the return of the Once and Future King. Some comedy, some angst, some before the return, some after, and all out of sequence (just to warn you.)
1. A Brief Encounter

****_Author's note: _

_Disclaimer first: I do not own Merlin (though I wish I did after hearing some of the spoilers for the finale) or Sherlock Holmes, nor do I make money off of them or claim to represent the original works in any fashion._

_Second, for all of you waiting for the next chapter of "Every Good Father" I hope it will be up in a week or two. I have had a lot of good ideas for it (my muse has been on a sugar high since Christmas), but haven't been in a position to do any significant-sized writing due to being away from home and my notes, etc. I don't usually make excuses, but since I posted last I have climbed the Great Wall, entered the Forbidden City and ascended to the Temple of Heaven. Also, I had a (very mild) case of pneumonia. So, you know, busy time and all that._

_Anyway, to make it up to you, please enjoy these: what I hope will be a fair number of short pieces based on Merlin's waiting and Arthur's return. Personally, I've never really liked the idea of an immortal Merlin suffering through the ages, but like most of my stories, these things won't go away. It's also the first time I've attempted the drabble-type/short bits format, so no promises as to quality. Just so you know, they won't be in any kind of sequence and will swing back and forth from Merlin's waiting to things happening after the return._

**A Brief Encounter**

_-x-_

* * *

_-x-_

Merlin met Sherlock Holmes once, though Watson never wrote of the encounter. Merlin didn't know if that was because the event was too peculiar for even the Doctor's readers, or simply because the incident was too short and unresolved to be of interest.

"The man you are searching for went that way, northwards over the tor," Merlin informed the pair without so much as an introduction or preamble.

"And how would you know that, my good man?" the famous detective asked the incongruity before him: the dapper young fellow dressed for a job in the City yet standing in the middle of an empty wilderness in Dartmoor on a drizzly day.

Merlin came up to him and placed a hand on the man's forearm. With one whispered word in a language not used for centuries, the blue-eyed man's eyes turned to gold and then he pointed. A path glowed over the tor like a stream of lava.

Holmes flinched, almost imperceptibly, but it was there. Merlin could tell that shock was not a typical reaction for the man and he sympathized. It was hard always knowing so much, never being surprised. But he also knew that Holmes, unlike his companion, would not in future years be able to talk himself out of what he had seen. The detective was a man who saw what was real and not simply what he expected reality to be. Merlin could see the deductions forming at lightning speed behind the man's gaze; that ability would give him more of a sense of wonder about this - small thing though it was - than his faithful companion would ever realize.

"Follow the path," was all Merlin said before turning away and starting off westwards.

Genuine curiosity vibrated beneath the detective's inscrutable demeanour, and perhaps not a little awe. "What are you?" he asked the retreating figure.

"Merely a very tired old man," Merlin said over his shoulder. "Nothing more. Good day, gentlemen."

And with that he was gone, leaving the detective with one of the few true mysteries of his life.

Sherlock Holmes was forever grateful.


	2. The Unforeseen Dangers of Leaving Home

**The Unforeseen Dangers of Leaving Home**

**-x-**

* * *

**-x-**

Merlin learned very quickly that he should never leave the newly arisen Round Table on their own for very long. Or ever, for that matter.

One afternoon he returned home after a stop at the grocer's to find all eight of them surrounding a sleepily cross Gogmagog with questionable intent.

"No, no, don't feel you have to help or anything," he groused as he struggled through the door overly laden with bags. "What's food for nine people going to weigh after all?"

Arthur, the prat, did what he normally did: i.e. completely miss what Merlin had said, or even that he had spoken, and start complaining about something else entirely. "Merlin!" Arthur exclaimed, and to Merlin's puzzlement he grabbed Gogmagog from his cozy place on the rocking chair and thrust the dangling - and now slightly disgruntled - cat towards the long-suffering warlock. "This creature is stubbornly refusing to talk for us. Is the beast being disrespectful or does he have some sort of mental affliction?"

"Perhaps he is a foreign cat and doesn't understand English?" an uncertain Gwen suggested.

"Nonsense!" Arthur asserted. "Likely he takes after his master in being half-witted and disobedient."

It was a mark of Merlin's confusion that it didn't even occur to him to threaten Arthur with being turned into a donkey.

"Just because he doesn't want to talk to you, Princess, doesn't mean he can't," Gwaine said.

"Do you mean Merlin or the animal?" Leon asked, not without good reason for Merlin seemed to be paralyzed, mouth gaping and brain seized up like a set of locked brakes.

"I think perhaps we have not been able to assess the situation fully," Gaius said.

Merlin nodded dumbly. "I think, somehow, that may be the case," he finally managed to get out.

"We were watching the magic scrying box - " Lancelot began to explain.

"Ahhh," Merlin said. He was still mostly in the dark, but a sense of the problem was starting to form.

The full story finally came out. While they had not comprehended a word of the cat food commercial, they had recognized that the cat on the screen was speaking with a human voice and in human words - it being the same language Merlin used when speaking into his far-speaking glass ("Mobile phone!" he'd told them nearly every day, barely keeping his voice from rising to a shout) - and, of course, every one of them had now come to the conclusion that all cats in the future could talk.

For his eight newly awoken friends, television was alien to the point of being completely unfathomable. Ironically, it was not the technology itself that was the problem (though the first time they had stumbled onto it they had rushed to him in a panic, Gwen practically in tears, begging for his help to free the tiny people trapped in the box and return them to normal size). The science behind it was simply so far beyond their ken they'd immediately ignored Merlin's rambling explanation and dismissed the wonder as a piece of Merlin's magic and thought no more about it.

No, the problem was their incomprehension of this particular mode of story-telling. Tales might have been be recited or sung in their time, but for a group for whom even medieval mystery plays had been an innovation a century or two in their future, the idea of watching people act out fictional works was a hard to wrap their heads around. *

So naturally special effects and the concept of advertising were RIGHT over their heads. (As was the idea of having food specially designed just for _cats, _who should be sustaining themselves on vermin and the occasional table scrap.) Merlin shuddered at the very idea of working through an explanation of them, though he supposed he'd have to do it sooner or later.

At this moment, Merlin didn't know whether to laugh or cry. What he did know however, was that from now on he was going to have all of the groceries delivered.

* * *

* A "mystery" play was not a murder mystery, but something along the lines of a religious passion play. While theatre had been around since the Ancient Greeks, knowledge of it was lost to the Dark Ages and the art form had to make a slow comeback.


	3. Little Lessons

**Little Lessons**

**.  
**

* * *

**.  
**

Merlin supposed it was his fault.

What Merlin had never considered in those rare times when he had imagined Arthur's return (and he hadn't seen the others coming back at all, especially a newly young Gaius) was that it wouldn't be the "big" things his King would have to adjust to that would throw him for a loop - the cars, the computers, moving pictures, etc. - but instead the small things. For it was the near constant barrage of the little, unexpected items and inventions and conventions that caused Merlin daily despair at just _how_ alien this modern world was for his companions and how many things he himself had to learn in taking care of them.

Like doorknobs, of all things. Merlin had grown so used to them that when Elyan couldn't open a door because he kept pulling on the handle without turning it, the warlock was shocked to remember this particular innovation had only been around for less than a hundred and fifty years and his friends would have never seen one in their lives. Cutlery was another thing - they didn't know how to eat with a fork! And clothing! Their unfamiliarity with zippers he'd guessed at, but not buttons. (Fifteen hundred years later and he was _still_ having to dress the prat!) Another day he unthinkingly told them he'd be back at 11:45 and got half way to the market before realizing they wouldn't even know what a clock _was_, let alone be able to tell time. And the day before yesterday it was paintings; he'd known photographs would be new to them, but it wasn't until he recalled that medieval art had had no perspective or even realistic faces that he understood their marvel at the portrait in the sitting room.

Foodstuffs were a never-ending introduction. Coffee was new to them, as was actual tea, and only Gaius seemed to like either. Upon tasting the former, both Arthur and Leon had unconsciously spit it on the floor and Merlin - once again - had to remind them servants weren't waiting in the wings to clean up after them.

Oranges and bananas were also strange, though much better received once Merlin had told Gwaine to peel it first instead of biting into it like a chimp. ("Like a _what_, Merlin?) However, this event lead Merlin to learn a very important lesson, namely to make sure _every _one of them saw his demonstrations. For Gwaine's unholy embrace of exotic fruits lead almost directly to the revelation that he had missed Merlin's bathroom instructions on the first night and had been relieving himself amongst Merlin's rose bushes. It also lead incidentally to the discovery of what the knight had been using the "little well with the handle" in the bathroom for, a picture of which simply didn't bear thinking about.

Another lesson Merlin was quickly forced to learn was never to let them use anything that involved power or electricity. He had foolishly believed their fascination with switching lights on and off all hours of the day had meant they understood how things were powered in 21st century. Needless to say it was a presumption doomed to a speedy end with the cooking incident.

They'd meant well, he knew. He'd gone to bed with a massive headache and while Gaius had cursed and raved at the child-proof cap on the "willow bark pills" Merlin had shown him before (eventually cutting his finger when he tried to saw the bottle open with his eating dagger, causing Merlin to have to get up and show him how to apply a Band-Aid), the others had decided they would make the evening meal.

Unfortunately, instead of just making up a cold plate, they had come to the consensus that something hot was called for.

So, twenty minutes later, a rather inevitable commotion ensued and Merlin raced downstairs to find - in no particular order - a) the tree near the front door cut down, b) a stack of wood sitting in his electric stove, c) the smoke detector shrieking and d) eight crestfallen medieval souls glumly standing in the shower of water coming from his sprinkler system.

Despite his headache, Merlin could feel one side of his mouth twitching.

"All right," he said, clapping his hands together after the fire trucks had left, "There will be two lessons tonight. First one: No one is ever, and I repeat _ever_, to touch _anything_ until I've taught them how to use it."

"Second lesson: Sandwiches!"

.

* * *

**_Random History Bits: _**

_The doorknob as we know it was patented in 1878._

_Forks have been around since Ancient Egypt, but weren't commonly used in Western Europe until the 16th century in Italy, and the 18th century for most of the rest of the continent._

_Zippers were invented in 1851. Buttons with buttonholes used as fasteners on clothes came to Europe around the 13th or 14th century._

_Graphical perspective in painting (I think) originated in Italy in the early 1400s. _

_I know tea is mentioned on an episode, but tea didn't come to England until about 1660, and wasn't widely consumed until the 19th century, so in my head canon they were using some different version and just calling it "tea". Also, just so you know, I don't picture Arthur and Leon doing this in a selfish way, but just as a habit of the time._

_Sandwiches have a long history, but they appeared in England around the 18th century, supposedly originating with (and named for) John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich._


	4. A Knight's Cloak, Part I

**A Knight****'****s Cloak, Part I**

******.**

* * *

**.  
**

The call came in the early evening, just as Merlin was thinking about starting dinner. The ring-tone was the general one. A stranger, then. _Likely another bloody telemarketer_, he reckoned.

"Hello," he answered. In the background most of the Knights were loudly debating about how much modern English they'd need to know before they could go out and chat up women, while Arthur had a one-sided dispute with the narrator of a documentary on cannons in warfare (not at all hampered by the fact he only understood one word in ten and had no idea what cannons were), and Gwen - bless her - ran the vacuum.

"Hello?" a woman's voice asked hesitantly. "Is this Mr. Martin Emmerson?"

A sinking feeling came over Merlin. "Just a moment," he said as he stuck a finger in his other ear and quickly got up and strode outside to the front step. "I'd use the common language of being a general all-around handsome bugger," he heard Gwaine assert to all and sundry as he left.

"Sorry. Yes, this is Martin Emmerson."

The woman sounded a bit dubious. "The Martin Emmerson who served with 712 Squardron at Hornchurch aerodrome during the war?"

Merlin nearly said yes, but caught himself just in time. "No, that was my grandfather."

"Oh!" the woman seemed relieved now. "I thought you sounded a bit young. But I'm glad you're a relative; I've been making ever so many calls trying to track your grandfather down. Can you give me his number?"

"Uh… that might be a little difficult."

"Oh, heavens, he hasn't passed on, has he? I mean, I know at his age it would be likely, but Dad had never heard…"

"No, no, he's alive." _Sod it, _Merlin cursed, _why did I say that? _Thinking fast, he said, "It's just that… well, he's not really in a fit state for calls, you know?"

"Yes, I'm sorry. I understand. I'd hoped… but well, I won't bother you any longer."

"I could pass a message on," Merlin offered.

"Well, if you think it would be all right… It's not urgent, well, I mean, not for him or really not for anyone, it's done…and…"

Merlin took in the rambling, teary voice and the way it broke off and unconsciously hugged himself tighter, trying to convince himself it was just against the chill of the autumn air. "Ma'am? Are you still there?"

"I'm sorry. Please let your grandfather that his old friend Harry Caldwell passed away last night."

Merlin eyes shut tightly with pain and he sank down slowly to huddle on the cold stone step.

"But only if your family thinks he's strong enough," the voice continued. "I… I didn't ring you meaning to cause any problems."

"No, no, of course not," Merlin replied automatically, doing his best to reassure the tearful voice over the phone. A thought occurred to him. "Is this Thea?" he asked.

"Yes, I'm Thea. Thea Dodd now. How did you know?"

"Harry… I mean, my grandfather told me how excited your father had been when you were born."

"Really?"

"Yes. During the war, wasn't it?"

"That's right. Dad had sent Mum to Canada when he found out she was expecting. To escape the Blitz, you know. I didn't get to meet him until the whole thing was over. I was nearly five."

"I remember," Merlin said without thinking and then rushed to cover himself, "I mean, I remember granddad saying that. It had made him so sad at the time, but he was grateful your father did get to see you eventually."

"I know. It was hard adjusting to having a father around when it'd been just Mum and I for so long, but then so many didn't get to meet their Dads…" Merlin had a sudden pang of sympathy for Thea quite apart from her current loss; he knew what it was like to not have a father around. He might have been just as put out if Balinor had returned when he was in some perverse childhood possessive stage. Still though, at least Harry and Thea had got their chance, and a sad smile flitted briefly across Merlin's face as he remembered the pure joy he'd felt for his friend at the time.

"I'll let you go now, Mr. Emmerson. I hope I didn't disturb your evening."

He drew himself up and swallowed hard to try and hide the wobble in his voice. "Martin, please," he corrected. "And no, of course you didn't disturb me. It's fine. I'm glad you let me know. I'll be sure to tell Granddad when I can."

"Martin, all right. And thank you. I hope your Granddad gets better, though I don't suppose the old dears do at that age, do they?"

"No, I guess not." _So many lies, so much hiding even now__…__ It__'__s a wonder I__'__ve ever been able to get close to anyone, _Merlin thought.

"Goodbye then, Martin."

"Goodbye, Thea. I'm terribly sorry for your loss. Granddad told me so many stories when I was little… well, he always made it sound like your father was a wonderful man."

"Thank you, Martin. I'm glad to know he's remembered so well. Goodbye." Sniffling gently, the grief-stricken woman suddenly rung off before Merlin could wish her goodbye again.

Something clenched in Merlin's chest and then settled heavily against his heart. Tears pricked at his eyes as he listened to the far off sound of children playing in the woods somewhere to his right.

_Harry__…__ damnit. You were the last one._

But of course that wasn't true, was it. He was the last one. He always was.

From inside the house he suddenly heard Gwaine calling out for him, "Merlin! There's a picture of beans on one of these tins you showed us! Does that mean there are beans inside?"

Merlin was unable to deal with his friends' endless needs just then. Tears making slow, burning tracks down his cheeks, he quickly walked away into the darkening evening.


	5. A Knight's Cloak, Part II

**A Knight****'****s Cloak Part II**

**.****  
**

* * *

**.  
**

Merlin closed his eyes.

_The memories came back unbidden, but he welcomed them gladly. _

The grass was cool under the palms of his hands, the smell fresh despite the slight autumn dryness of it.

_He__'__d been a great pilot. An exceptional pilot, even without his magic. With it__…__ with it he was their stalwart anchor, their good luck charm, the one they followed as he raced forward with a roar._

Magic flowed down his arms, reaching out. He felt the lapping of the water against the lake's shore, the respiration of the trees, the wild magic of the earth.

_In the leading section he opened the Spitfire up and took off, the Rolls-Royce __"__Merlin__"__ engine thrumming beneath him, heading south-east, climbing, climbing, 12,000 feet and through the clouds. Above them the sun was bright and brilliant. _

The expanse of his perception grew slowly outwards and merged more and more with that around him. He let his humanity slip gently through his fingers like a trickle of water. He breathed with the trees, skimmed the top of the water as a dragonfly, shifted bodily in the breeze as a blade of grass.

_There! Fifty of them, roughly 1000 feet higher and turning to come down on them like a massive swarm of insects. The squadron was among them in the space of a moment and Merlin__'__s heart leapt into the fray. The next ten minutes felt like ten seconds and ten years and was a blur of diving and weaving and rolling machines, tracer bullets coming from everywhere, sheets of flame. Then, just below him, climbing quick - a Messerschmitt. He closed to 200 yards and gave a three-second burst. _

_He__'__d been a pilot in the first war (though his squad was not to know that), but his skill was something more. Something even more than the pride of defending his homeland, of protecting Albion. _

_For he was the kin of dragons and he was made to fight in the sky. _

There was no Merlin, no Martin, no man at all. Even the dream of his past began to grow fainter. He was the water of the lake's depth, cool and heavy, shifting ever so gently with the motion of the world. He was the stones on the shore, being worn away and rounded smooth as the eons progressed.

_He__'__d always been a warrior, though only Lancelot had ever seen. He may not have liked to kill, but he could. He may not have clamoured for a fight like the younger knights with their blood up, but when the danger came his heart was steadfast and ready. He was a spirit of nature, born both for renewal and battle, for nature was both gentle and brutal. _

_And though his soul ached for those he shot down, when he put on that blue RAF uniform he felt he__'__d finally been given his Knight__'__s cloak. _

_For he was finally - openly and completely - part of a brotherhood. _

Sitting by the lake, palms to the ground and joined to the magic of the earth, for the moment he escaped from his grief in the dance of the rain as it started to fall.

_-x-_

Lancelot, more attuned to the Lake of Avalon than perhaps even Arthur, found him there hours later. He brushed some of the dark, rain-plastered locks from Merlin's forehead and then carried him home.

* * *

_Author's greetings:_

_Hmm, guess that last chapter really struck a chord! Anyway, thanks to all of you and to everyone who has reviewed/favourited/followed any of this little bits._

_As for this particular one, I don't know whether to keep it going or not. There is more I planned to say, but I kind of like ending it this way. Opinions?_

_P.S. - The engines in Spitfires really were called "Merlins", though they were named for the bird of prey, rather than the mythical sorcerer. Later they were upgraded to "Griffons"._


	6. Vital Strategic Information

_Hello again! For those of you waiting for another chapter of "A Knight's Cloak", I haven't decided yet but there likely will be a sequel or at least some kind of continuation where it's referenced in a future chapter. Meanwhile, I felt like a bit of comedy today..._

_Oh, and just a warning, but there is some swearing at the end.  
_

**Vital Strategic Information **

**.****  
**

* * *

**.  
**

One day Arthur decided that, as leader, he should know more about the dangers to be faced in this new and perplexing world. Television had given him many glimpses of an era filled with monstrous creatures, but, as he was learning, it was not a font of knowledge to be unquestioningly trusted. Therefore, the logical step was to interrogate Merlin.

"Merlin!"

Merlin looked away from his other scrying box ("Com-pu-ter, Arthur. Say it with me. _Com-pu-ter._") to attend to his King.

"Are these flying purple people eater creatures something we need to be concerned with?"

Merlin peered at him in a rather annoying fashion until he finally said, _"What?"_

"Don't look at me as though I'm mad, you dull-witted cabbage-head. I'm talking about the creatures in the ballad I heard the other day."

"Ballad…? OHH!" Merlin laughed. "No, no, they're nothing we have to worry about."

"But they _eat _people!"

Arthur saw Merlin bite his lip, trying not to laugh. "They've all been tamed now, Sire. They play in rock n' roll bands."

Arthur had no idea what a rock n' roll band was but he had no wish to further display his ignorance to his abysmally rude former manservant any more that day. "Very well. Thank you for clearing that up for me."

"Anytime, Arthur."

_-x-_

_Two days later__…_

"Merlin!"

The warlock dutifully turned from the com-pu-ter. "Yes, Arthur?"

"That giant hairy deformed man-creature, did he really climb that remarkable keep in York? The Vampire State Building?"

Once again Merlin had the effrontery to look as though he didn't understand him, instead of responding to his perfectly reasonable question.

"You know the one - they had the cheek to call him a "King" even though he wasn't a man and had an utterly ridiculous name. 'Kong!' I ask you, what sort of name is that for a King? And… _are you laughing, Merlin?_"

"No, Sire."

"You're shaking."

"Bit of a chill, that's all. Anyway, it's _New_ York, and no, Kong never climbed the _Empire_ State Building. It was just a movie."

Arthur furrowed his brow and generally looked disapproving. He didn't understand the point of movies. Merlin had finally been able to make him clear on what they were, but he just didn't see the purpose of telling an epic story if not to educate and entertain people with the glories of some past hero. But all he said was, "I see," and walked away.

After all, it wouldn't do for Merlin to get too smug.

_-x-_

_The next day__…_

"Merlin!"

This time Merlin didn't even bother turning away from the com-pu-ter to look at him. "What is it, Arthur?"

"Merlin, what is a 'were-wolf'?"

"Arthur, for pity's sake, what channel are you _watching_?"

"Your King needs to know something, _Mer_lin, so kindly oblige without the extraneous comment."

"Extraneous? Somebody's vocabulary has improved in the last millennium and a half!"

"Just tell me, you lack-wit."

"Fine, fine. It's a man or woman who changes into a wolf at the full moon. Though in movies they're usually portrayed more as 'wolf-men', sort of people with an exaggerated hairiness problem."

"Like Gwaine?"

Merlin straightened and finally deigned to look at him. "You know, I never thought of that," he said. "Best keep on eye on him during the next full moon."

"Why is your mouth twisting up like that?"

"I'm certain I don't know, Sire."

Arthur highly suspected the soft snorting noises coming through the idiot's nose meant the impudent, mentally afflicted peasant was daring to laugh at him again.

_-x-_

"Merlin!"

"Yes?"

"Zombies?"

"Not unless Morgause is back with her immortal army."

_-x-_

"Merlin!"

"Remind me to acquaint you with the concept of an 'inside voice', Arthur."

"Giant marshmallow men?"

"It's fine, the Ghostbusters took care of it."

"Merlin?"

"Yes?"

"What's a marshmallow?"

Some distinct muttering was heard.

_-x-_

"Merlin!"

"What?"

"Vampires?"

"I can't say, but I'm going to hazard a guess and say they won't sparkle."

_-x-_

"Merlin!"

"Oh, for…What _now_, Arthur!"

"Can lightning really bring corpses back to life?"

"Do you want me to it try on you?"

"I have to say, Merlin, your advanced years have not brought you any greater wisdom on how to address your King."

_-x- _

"Merlin!"

"This must be a particularly worrisome one - you finally removed your royal posterior from the sofa cushions."

"One of these days I'm going to put you in the stocks again."

"They don't exist any more," Merlin smirked. "It's democracy, me ol'mate. The working man, claiming his rightful equality with all, has overthrown his violent oppressors and is slave to the capricious tyrants of the upper ranks no more."

"Pardon me?"

Merlin sighed. "I suppose I'm really going to have to get started on those history lessons soon."

"Never mind," Arthur waved dismissively. "Killer tomatoes, Merlin - threat or not?"

Merlin flinched and went entirely rigid. "Why?" he hissed frantically. "Have they done something?"

"Well, no, it's just - "

Merlin latched onto his arm painfully. "Arthur, what did you see? _YOU HAVE TO TELL ME!__"_

"It's nothing. It was just on the scrying box - "

"_WE CAN__'__T TAKE THAT CHANCE!__" _Merlin cried out, leaping to his feet and dashing to the kitchen. He snatched the bowl of tomatoes from the counter, opened the window and threw them outside. Then Merlin shouted a spell and a fire large enough to reach the height of the window surged, scorching the very ground where the offending fruit had landed completely black. Finally Arthur watched in shock as Merlin shook his fist and yelled, _"__GODDAMNED BASTARD TOMATOES! DON__'__T THINK YOU__'__RE GOING TO WIN THIS!__"_

Arthur stared open-mouthed. Merlin bent over, hands on his knees, and panted, "Thank heavens you said something, Sire! You did the right thing."

Even after Merlin walked away, Arthur was frozen in place wondering what in the name of all the Gods had just happened.

In fact, it wasn't until Merlin took him the market one day and bent over, positively weeping with laughter, when Arthur went wide-eyed and moved cautiously away from the pile of tomatoes ("It was a tactical retreat, you imbecile, not that I'd expect you to know anything about it), that Arthur realized his damn fool of a manservant had pulling his leg.

And so it was then that Arthur Pendragon, King of the Britons, determined that the gravest danger he had to face in this new world was a mentally deficient sorcerer.

.

* * *

_Author's notes: _

_Boy, these things are getting further and further away from drabble length.  
_

_Anyway, first off, for Arthur fans, I will say two things in his defence: a) as a man missing the last 1500 years, he would have absolutely no frame of reference for what was real or not, and b) he comes from a land where strange, magical beasts are quite normal. So please no one think he's an idiot here._

_Second, for the younger or more international readers amongst us, "Flying Purple People Eater" was a novelty song from the 1950s sung by Sheb Wooley, and "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes" was a very low budget comedy horror film from 1978. Both are available on Youtube if you want to check them out. I haven't seen the movie myself, but the trailer is on Youtube as well and is so bad in itself that it's absolutely hilarious._


	7. Look Upwards

_A little something for all my fellow Gaius fans:_

**Look Upwards**

**.  
**

* * *

**.  
**

It was a noise that caused him to stir, loud enough to penetrate his sleep but soft enough to slip out of his conscious thoughts without registering. Still...

Merlin turned over and curled up smaller in the blankets, trying to hold onto sleep. A brightness intruded, however, and he let out a small groan as he felt himself pulled awake.

"Gaius? Is that you? What are you doing up?" Merlin asked blearily as he scrubbed a hand at his barely open eyes.

Gaius was sitting at the desk in the room he shared with Merlin. At the sound of Merlin's voice he whipped his hands away from his face. "I'm sorry, my boy. I didn't mean to wake you."

"But what are you still doing up?"

"Just reading."

"Are you all right?"

"Of course, of course. You go back to sleep now. I'll go down to the kitchen to read."

Merlin didn't listen. He got up and walked to the end of the bed so that he could sit and face his old mentor. "What's wrong, Gaius? And don't try to deny it - you had your hands up to your face as though you were tired or sad and I assume the noise that woke me was this pencil by the dustbin hitting the floor. Not to mention I'm certain I heard a "Fie!" as well."

"It's of no importance. I'm just frustrated."

"At what?"

"Nothing. It's nothing."

"Gaius, tell me," Merlin persisted. "Please?"

"I'm just tired."

"So rest. Gaius, it's three-forty-seven. Most people are asleep at this time of night."

"But I have to…"

"Have to what? What is so important?"

"This!" Gaius exclaimed, waving a book at Merlin.

"Bryson's _'__A Short History of Nearly Everything__'_? I admit it's a fascinating book, Gaius, but what - "

"It's not the book! It's… _everything! _It's all of it! It's all the history and science and machines and social protocols and - "

"Gaius, calm down," Merlin soothed. "I know it's a lot, but you don't have to learn it all tonight."

"But I do! Not tonight perhaps, but as soon as possible."

Merlin shook his head helplessly. "Gaius, what are you talking about? Why are you driving yourself so hard?"

"Merlin… why are we here?"

"I don't understand what you mean."

"Arthur was supposed to return upon Albion's greatest need. There have been plagues and wars and evil deeds being perpetrated for centuries and he never came back, so why now? And why the rest of us as well?" Gaius stared intently at his former ward. "Merlin… _what is coming?__"_

Merlin recognized the seriousness of what Gaius was saying. "I don't know. It worries me too. Something worse than the Black Death, worse than the Holocaust… I just don't know. I can't even imagine it."

"That's why I have to catch up with this era, Merlin. Otherwise how else can I be of help to you?"

"I appreciate that, Gaius. And it's something all of us are going to have to talk about soon, perhaps even tomorrow. But driving yourself into the ground won't help either - you need to be healthy and strong. And don't think that just because you're twenty-five again doesn't mean that you can't make yourself sick with overwork."

"Oh, yes… _that_."

"What is it, Gaius? It's as if you're not pleased to be young again."

"What should I be pleased about? I'm no longer a physician. I'm in a paradise of books and yet I can hardly read a word. The young man I did my best to advise is now centuries older and more experienced than I could ever be. I have no _place_, Merlin. I'm just a callow youth out of time, without even a strong arm or skill with a sword to offer you in whatever fight is coming! How is that worth a thatch of brown hair and a few less stiffer joints?"

Merlin opened his mouth as if to say something and then thought better of it. He rose and slapped his hand against the other man's upper arm. "Get dressed," he said.

"What? Why?"

"Don't ask questions. I have something to show you."

"Do I have to wear those awful modern clothes?"

"Gaius, no one wears robes nowadays but judges and clergymen. You'd look silly. Besides, the bloody thing would look like a sail on you now. You're nothing but skin and bones."

Gaius huffed with annoyance, but got ready like Merlin asked.

_-x- _

They walked for roughly a kilometre and then carefully picked their way up a small hill in the dark. Once they had reached the top, Merlin pointed upwards. "Look at that," he told Gaius.

"The moon? You brought me out here to show me the moon?"

"Yes, because it's a different moon than the one that existed in our time."

"It doesn't look any different to me," Gaius groused and Merlin thought to himself that his old friend may look twenty-five but he was still as cantankerous as he ever was.

"Well, it is. I want you to look at it, really look at it. Go on," Merlin urged. When Gaius reluctantly did, Merlin stood beside him and began to speak.

"The moon in our time was an unquestioned presence, a night visitor that all could see but only a few puzzled at. It was just another light in the sky that might guide you in the dark or tell you when to plant your crops, but no one knew what it itself was and most didn't care.

"But _that_ moon up there has had people on it!"

"What?"

"It's true. Human beings have traveled to the moon, Gaius. We've been there and walked on its surface and found it was even more mysterious afterwards than it was before."

"But how is that possible?"

"Three men rode into the heavens in a giant vehicle called a rocket. It was propelled by a fire more massive and powerful than you can possibly imagine and in it they blazed their way towards the stars and escaped the bonds of Earth. Once free of our planet's pull, their rocket fell away and in a tiny capsule they made their way towards the moon through the inhospitable depths of space. Once there, two of those men entered an even tinier craft and piloted it down to the surface to land in the Sea of Tranquility.

"It isn't a sea made of water, but a large, dark, basaltic plain, formed by ancient volcanic eruptions. When a man named Neil Armstrong stepped out of that fragile little craft and onto that sea, he was the first person ever from Earth to set foot on a heavenly body not our own. As he did so he said that it was "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

Merlin looked over to see his old mentor wide-eyed and barely breathing, his expression that of a boy's.

"And then what did they do?" Gaius asked, his voice hushed.

"They explored. Armstrong's companion Aldrin described the land around them as "magnificent desolation", and it truly was - _is - _an alien place, Gaius. And before they left, the two men - _astronauts_ - left a plaque which read, 'Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon. July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.' "

" '_Came in peace for all mankind_,' " Gaius repeated. "Did they come back?"

Merlin laughed. "Oh, yes. To a hero's welcome. In fact, Armstrong only died last year, and Aldrin and the third man - Michael Collins - are still alive."

"Marvelous," Gaius breathed. "It's… it's astonishing. _Astounding. _Men have been to the _moon!_"

"It's even more astounding when you know all of what was involved."

"I don't believe it. How could it ever be more astounding?"

Merlin smiled. "You'll understand eventually. You know, people say Armstrong's footprint will last until the end of time."

"How?"

"The moon has no atmosphere, nor any internal motions like tectonic plates shifting like here on Earth. Without air to erode them or water to wash them away or earthquakes to destroy them, they may indeed last forever."

"My word!"

The two men stared at the sky for some moments, until Gaius turned to his former ward, his "boy" who was now so much older than he. "But why did you bring me out here, Merlin?"

Merlin nodded towards the moon. "Because that's what you have to give, Gaius."

Gaius turned his gaze heavenward and then back to Merlin. "I'm afraid I don't follow."

"The moon landing wasn't just one moment, Gaius. It was a culmination, not just the hundreds of people striving towards that specific goal during the decade leading up to it, but the thousands and even millions of men and women throughout the centuries building up humankind's store of knowledge. People like you - not just wise, but wondering and searching for answers, thinking and reasoning, discovering and learning.

"Gaius, we need your experience - which you haven't lost, despite your new appearance - and we need your wisdom and your level-headedness and we _desperately_ need your calm sense of kindness and caring. But added to that we need the part of you that dreams of things like that," Merlin said, pointing upwards at the bright globe glowing in the sky. "Dreams like that are what move humans forward, not just physically and materially, but emotionally. To my mind, it's when we explore that we're at our most vibrant and when we look for answers that we're at our most divine."

Merlin faced his surrogate father and placed his hands on the man's shoulders. "Gaius, whatever trials are coming, we need the scientist in you to help us fight and then, even more importantly, after we've won we're going to need you to set us on the right path to the future. To remind us there's more to humanity than wars and battles and even just the brute, day-to-day struggles we face down here."

Gaius found himself unable to say anything for a long time. Finally he chuckled weakly as tears glistened in his eyes. "Foolish boy, you don't expect much do you?"

"Nope, not much at all," Merlin said around a wide grin. "So? Think you're up for the job?"

"Tell me more about the heavens. What other new miracles has mankind found?"

"Well, for a start, we're all made of stardust."

.

* * *

_Random fun fact:_

_In trying to picture Gaius as a young man, I've been looking for some pictures of Richard Wilson when he was young and finally found some today. Though I think his shoulders were just a touch wider, as a young man he was as lanky as Colin Morgan. In fact, he was so thin as a child he said he used to pray to God to make him fat. I also discovered that as a young man he studied science so he could work in a hospital - I guess the character of Gaius isn't that far of a stretch for him!_


	8. The End Times

_Author__'__s note: Warnings for some gore and horrible situations, and some language.  
_

**The End Times**

**.  
**

* * *

**.  
**

1348

It came in summer.

He'd lived ten times as long as Gaius by then, the bones of his first friends long since turned to dust, but nothing in that long life had prepared him for what came to Albion that fateful year.

Rumours of the horror had made their slow way from the continent for some months. Some said Avignon, the heart of what Merlin still thought of as the new religion, had been decimated, that thousands of houses lay empty save for the bodies of the dead. Others cried that the Pope had perished and God was scouring the Earth.

They were not far wrong.

_-x-_

He was in the fishing village of Flodwilm, a place populated by no more than three small clans, when the pestilence finally reached Albion's shores. The peddler from Bristol who told them of the horror said it had been as if the hand of God had touched the entire population of the town, carrying them away all at once, "for few kept to their beds past a day or two, many not even that."

The men folk gathered looked grim. Jeanne the cobbler's wife crossed herself and prayed under her breath, while Mary the brewer clutched her children close and hustled them away from the peddler, dragging the oldest boy Charles by the collar.

"You come now, William," she told Merlin. "I'll not have any what stays near that man taking a room in my house!"

"I'll put the man up," Big Richard the miller told her. "Shouldn'a been staying with a widow anyhow. You go home and keep yer young'uns safe."

"And wot are you all so afeared of me for?" the peddler demanded. "Ain't I always brung you lot things worth far more than the few farthings ye throw me?"

"A time like this ain't a good one for strangers," Big Richard said, and, as one, all but Merlin turned their backs on him and went to lock themselves in their homes.

"I'm sorry," Merlin said. "It's just that they're very afraid."

"Of me? Wot they afeared of me for?" the peddler begged of him, snappishness not quite hiding a sudden fear behind his eyes. "Wot'm I going to do fer business? Won't survive the winter, will I? Not if none'll buy from me!"

Merlin looked over the man's stock. "Here, give me that pot. I've got four pennies."

"It's t'ieving from a poor man on the road, is that. Thing's worth seven pennies if it's worth a groat."

"I'm afraid it's all I've got."

The peddler grudgingly took the coins, but uttered a soft, 'Thank'ee, lad, you're a kind one,' under his breath.

"Have you got somewhere to go?" Merlin asked.

"Think I'll push on. Don't fret none about my staying where I'm not welcome."

Merlin was about to caution him not to tell the next village about the pestilence for his own sake, but then realized that would be unfair to those who lived there. In the end, he simply nodded sadly and made his way towards the miller's house.

"Oi!" the peddler called after him. "You… you don't really tink I brung it wit' me, do ye?"

Merlin couldn't find anything to say.

"I haven't got it, ye know! I'm not sick! "

"No, of course not," Merlin said.

"Won't get it, neither! You'll see! To Hell wit' you, you weedy little sod! To Hell wit' all of you! You'll be sorry you've seen the back of me!" the peddler yelled.

"I'm already sorry," Merlin told him.

"I'm not sick, you little bastard! You hear me? _I__'__m not sick!__" _the man began to rant, growing hysteria threading its way through his louder and louder denial. _"__I__'__m not going to die!__"_

Merlin stood in the muddy lane even after the old man sobbed and feebly threw a rotten, half-eaten parsnip at him. He watched as the peddler got behind his cart and left the village.

That night the cobbler's daughter came down with a fever.

_-x-_

The peddler had been the first of those shunned and turned away, but hardly the last. Fever burned its way through the villagers, followed by vomiting and black blotches on the skin that to Merlin's eyes looked like internal hemorrhaging under the skin. The most frightening were the hideous pus-filled swellings that grew on the neck, under the armpits and around the groin.

At least until the panic of being unable to breathe through flooded lungs set in.

Half the village was struck in a matter of days. One person would get sick and then poison the rest of their family. Merlin fought tirelessly, going from house to house even when their own family members began to shun the sick, but nothing he did worked. There seemed to be no cure. Not even his magic helped.

Richard finally turned him out one day. "You're a good man, William lad, but you've been too close to them what's sick for my liking. I've got my little ones to consider."

Merlin couldn't tell him that he wouldn't fall ill so he nodded and walked away. For a day or two he lived in the forest, until he saw John and his family passing by in the woods.

"What news, John?" he asked.

The proud fisherman could not look at him and his wife's eyes were red with tears. "We're coming into the woods, William. Reckon we're best away from others till this 'ere passes."

"But where's Marian?"

"Left'er at the house," John said hoarsely. "Tweren't nothing more we could do fer her."

"She's gone then?"

John turned away without answering and pushed his family forward.

"John?" Merlin called after him, confused. "John, she's not still alive, is she?"

"Tweren't nothing more to do," John repeated without looking back.

"_John! She__'__s only three years old! How could you leave her to die!__"_

There was no answer.

Without a thought, Merlin returned to the village and went to John's house. There he found Simon nailing the door closed. "Get away!" Merlin shouted and chased the boy off.

"Is orders!" Simon protested. "Big Richard said!"

"Go on with you!" Merlin yelled back. He pulled the door open and found little Marian still breathing. He nursed her through the night and through the next day, even after he heard pounding coming from outside and the room went dark as the two souls were shut in again to die.

When Marian died two days later, Merlin pushed open the door and found an empty village.

-x-

That summer and fall he wandered as forlorn as the itinerant peddler and saw many horrors. Ghostly villages, empty but for a few haunted survivors; piles of bodies in various stages of putrefaction as those who were well grew unable to keep up with the burying of the dead; livestock left untended to die in ditches and rot in hedges. Rats were everywhere and feeding on the dead - one day he saw a giant one dragging what looked like a child's hand through the mud. Sheep lay fallen in the fields from some murrain, the stench so awful not even birds were coming near. And bells rang for the dead until there was no one left to play them.

Famine hit as there were few left strong enough to take in the harvests. Village, town or city, life came to a stop. Civil courts closed as local leaders died. Building projects were left to ruins. Food wasn't being made. Bread wasn't being baked. Sanitation - such that it was - was ignored. Those who lived deserted their homes or ran lawless in the streets, convinced they'd been abandoned by their God. Not expecting to live past tomorrow, instead they drank themselves senseless and went about trying to satisfy every bestial urge. Merlin tried to stop a man from raping his nine-year-old daughter in the street but was struck on the head by the poor child's mother.

Broken and stunned, people wailed for answers. Wild theories abounded; some thought the pestilence was spread by sight, others thought that it would come by merely thinking about it. Poisoned fish, poisoned wells, bad winds - all were claimed as the source. Most physicians were convinced it was a miasma in the air and so people made bundles of thyme, tansy and wormwood hoping to ward off the sickness, but all that did was mask the putrid stench of death for a little while. Meanwhile reports of the dead from clerics spreading the news continued to come out, forming a droning drumbeat in Merlin's head: _St. Leonard__'__s, 380; Holy Cross, 400; St. Margaret__'__s, 700; _and so on and so on in every parish he passed through.

And, as solutions failed, people turned to harsher extremes.

In one place, Merlin was almost relieved to stumble onto a crowd; he'd passed through so many abandoned towns he'd started to believe there was no one left in the world. He wondered why they were gathered, and so stood with them to watch what looked to be a procession, only to bear witness to a truly nightmarish spectacle. Fear had driven the survivors to horrifying penitent rituals and this is where he first saw the Flagellants - men and women either half-naked or with holes cut into the backs of their tunics, barefoot and smeared with ashes and wearing hoods with red crosses front and back - who flayed themselves and others with three-pronged whips, each throng bearing a knot with something sharp tied in it. The crowd, desperate for redemption worked themselves into a frenzy, chanting litanies and letting forth lamentations that rang fearfully through the air which smoked with a hundred torches.

When a large flick of blood from one spectre's swinging whip splattered against his face, Merlin ran.

But that was not the worst of it.

When cures and penitence didn't work, people turned the blame to others. On the continent it was said hundreds of cities slaughtered those of the Jewish faith and while that didn't happen in England Merlin knew it was only because the King had banished the Jews back in 1290. For England wasn't spared from the carnage; heretics and outsiders were dragged from their homes and burnt at the stake. Accusations went wild, neighbours turned on neighbours, some out of fear and some out of opportunity; those who were owed money were often condemned by those wishing to free themselves from debt.

Merlin recognized what was happening - it was another Purge, only this time vastly greater in scope.

As mindless violence ruled the cities and dead in the thousands filled huge trenches (some of the sick even buried alive with boulders lain on their chests to hold them down), and villages all over remained desolate except for a few haunted stragglers so ragged and emaciated and addled by horror they barely seemed human, Merlin began to wonder if it was the end of days.

And so he went to the Lake of Avalon.

_The world is ending, Arthur. Why haven__'__t you come? _

He staggered out into the water, past his knees, past his thighs, stopping finally as the freezing water circled his waist. "Am I to be left all alone?" he cried out loud in fury, raising his fists to the sky. "Have I been made immortal only to haunt a world of the dead?"

He broke down and wept with great wracking sobs.

_Arthur, why haven__'__t you come? _

_Why haven__'__t you come? _


	9. Story Time

**Story Time**

**.  
**

* * *

**.  
**

In those early days after the resurrection of the Round Table, Merlin found himself taking on many roles as he helped his friends acclimate as best they could to this strange and bewildering new world. He was sage, servant, teacher and even at times their leader. (Though he admitted the last was more in the way a lone man herding cats would be said to be "in charge".)

But the strangest role, and the one that made him laugh the hardest, was one that he didn't even realize he'd taken on until several months had gone by.

He'd fallen into the habit of reading to his friends in the evenings. It had started off as a way to keep them entertained, since - without the frame of reference provided by the last 1500 years of history and culture - television and movies were mostly incomprehensible even when they understood the words and, after the debacle of their trip to a shopping center in Exeter which involved an escalator, panic, violent threats and quite a number of security personnel, public excursions were now severely cut back. But as the ritual went on, Merlin also began to see his nightly reading as an excellent opportunity to get the Table used to the language and to start to fill in some of those culture gaps.

Therefore, deciding to work his literary way from past to present, he started with the oldest book he had on hand - Martorell's _Tirant Lo Blanc_, a medieval romance from the late 15th century. (Actually it was Merlin's second oldest book, but he wasn't ready to deal with _Le Morte d__'__Arthur _and had had it hidden in a trunk in the attic for decades.)

For hours a night Merlin would read himself hoarse as his friends all sat gathered around him in his sitting room, usually with mugs of hot cocoa he made for them. After _Tirant_ he worked his way through _Don Quixote_, various works of Shakespeare (they liked the witches and murky atmosphere of _Macbeth_, but booed Hamlet's whining indecisiveness), _Gulliver__'__s Travels _and _Robinson Crusoe _(though he skipped over the more racist references to poor Friday). Every so often he would intersperse these with a selection of modern books set in the past, such as the first in O'Brian's _Master and Commander _series, or back-tracking a bit for a couple of Ellis Peters' Brother Cadfael series and several tales of Robin Hood.

He even read them the occasional fantasy novel. He didn't usually care for them himself, mostly due to the unhappy memories and/or rueful embarrassment caused by the stock archetype of the wise, old wizard (knowing full well who every one of them was based on), but he did read a couple by an author he'd grown fond of while living in Canada for awhile, and so Gavriel Kay's _A Song for Arbonne _and _The Lions of Al-Rassan _were quickly devoured by all. He even considered starting in on George R. R. Martin's epic saga, but dreaded the reception he would get if he got through them all only to have to tell his audience the series wasn't finished yet.

Come December, he began _Pride and Prejudice_, mostly for Gwen's sake (who'd been patient with a lot of knights, sea tales and war stories), but despite their derision, even Arthur and Gwaine were cheering for the spirited Elizabeth to get her Mr. Darcy by the end. Austen's book also gave Merlin the idea of showing the group the film adaptations of a story they were already familiar with. He borrowed the Colin Firth version from the library and was gratified to see his friends' understanding of both the story and the concept of film increase dramatically.

So, starting in on that vein, he planned _A Christmas Carol _for around the holidays. He finished up on Christmas Eve, stressing to them to remember the tale as Scrooge was a character everybody would expect them to recognize, and then showed them his favourite version - the one with George C. Scott and David Warner - on Christmas Day. Needless to say, he was immensely pleased when the whole experiment was a hit.

Of course, he conceded to himself, the punch bowls of hot buttered rum and mulled cider likely helped too.

In the New Year, he worked his way further into the 19th century with _Rob Roy _and _David Copperfield _and, when those proved a little too lugubrious and slow, he moved onto Sherlock Holmes, canon _and _pastiches. These were much more successful and Gwaine started making noises about becoming a detective, provoking a three day debate over Gwaine's lack of qualifications, silence and bodily hygiene (_"Your quarry would smell you a mile off, mate_," Elyan told him), and another three day debate on who would be his "Watson".

So reading time became a cherished routine, though Merlin didn't appreciate how much so until one week when he'd begged off, complaining of eye strain and a sore throat. (That wasn't truly the reason, and he thought several of them might have guessed it when he turned in to bed early three nights in a row, but he wasn't ready to tell them the real cause yet: that he'd worn himself down trying to get a sense of whatever catastrophe might have called back the Once and Future King. After all, they had their hands full trying to cope with their new lives and he had nothing yet to tell them.)

The company restrained themselves for two nights, quietly occupying themselves with chess, cards and dice games, and even reading for themselves for those who'd grown proficient at it, but by the third evening the active knights were bored, and when they woke Merlin with a game of something called "sword cricket" in the basement, he ordered them upstairs and had them gather round his bed.

And it was there, as he got three chapters into Edward Rutherford's _London _and suddenly looked out at the eager faces of the people sitting practically at his feet, that his jaw dropped:

Seven grown men and one grown woman couldn't get by without their bed-time story!

He started to laugh, ignoring his friends' looks of puzzlement. Explainer, guide, protector and now story-reader… _By the Gods, he'd somehow fallen into the role of "Father"!_

He wondered if this was how Gaius had felt back in the day, the poor man.

.

* * *

_Author's greetings:_

_Well, this wasn't the piece I expected to write today, but there it is. Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed it and, if you're skeptical Arthur and the others could grow so dependent on a routine, try going without your television or computer for a few days. I haven't had a tv for nearly four years and it took a sum total of two months of visiting my mother who does to get back into the habit again. I've been antsy and annoyed practically every evening since! _

_Anyway, a sincere thank you to all of my readers! The response has been fantastic! Cheers!_


	10. The Thing in the Water

_Author's note: Warning, some minor language._

**The Thing in the Water**

**.  
**

* * *

**.  
**

**1935**

**Isle aux Morts, Newfoundland**

"Mary! Mary! Don't let it gets me, Mary!" the writhing man on the bed screamed.

"Sure and I need ye to calm down, Jack love," the worried woman trying to hold down her husband's arms said.

"No, it's coming Mary! The monster's been beatin' the pat' all these years and now it's coming!"

"There ain'ts no monster, Jack!"

"What's Da on about, Mam?" thirteen-year-old Ned asked from just outside the door. "What monster?"

"Jesus, Mary 'n Joseph, Ned!" the flustered Mary snapped at her eldest, "Don't be bothering with such foolishness now! Where's Frank with the doctor?"

The boy's Aunt Ruby looked at him even while struggling to help her sister to keep her brother-in-law from hurting himself. "It's only the delirium talking, my love," she soothed. "Go down now and wait for your uncle and the doctor. Mind your uncle gets some coffee too; it's an early morning for him tomorrow if he's going to replace your Da on the boat."

Ned reached the bottom of the stairs just as Doc McKiver and his uncle Frank burst through the door. The doctor only stopped to yank off his snow-covered coat before heading up to his patient, giving Ned a distracted nod on the way. Frank meanwhile reckoned the room upstairs would be crowded enough, so went to warm his hands at the wood stove.

"Right brass-monkey weather out there right now, young Ned. I'm after freezing my fingers off. Won't be any use tomorrow if that happens."

Ned nodded and bit his lip. He was trying to be a man - wouldn't be but another year and he be on the fishing boats himself - but he was scared.

His uncle saw. "Don't take on, Neddy me son. Yer Da's bad off, I'll grant ye, but he's been through worse."

"But he's talkin' _crazy_, Uncle Frank," Ned whispered. "Goin' on 'bout some monster wandering the roads and coming for him."

Ned saw his uncle stiffen.

"What is it, Uncle Frank?"

"Nuthin', boy," the thick-shouldered fisherman told him, but young Ned saw him shrug like a person does when they're trying to shake off a sudden chill. "Yer Da's jist got the pneumonia. People say strange things when dere 'eads is burning up like that with the fever."

Ned noticed though that his Uncle hadn't looked at him at all while speaking, but instead had kept his gaze fixed on the stairs leading up to the floor where his sick brother-in-law lay. Even with worry for his Da hitting him again, Ned was still perceptive enough to know this was something else.

However, he didn't feel like pushing his uncle that night, so in the end Ned might never have got to hear the story if Old Billy McCrae from down the road hadn't come by a couple of bottles of Black Label beer to keep Frank company during the vigil.

Old Billy was a scraggly cuss, half "touched", or so most said. Ned had once asked his cousin Doreen why that was and she'd told Ned, "Gots a problem with the liquor, that's alls I know. But Da told Jenkins at the church one day he'd gone strange after they found that "thing" in the water."

"What thing?" Ned had asked breathlessly.

"Dunno, but there's a whole bunch of'em what's never been quite right since, from how old lady Normandeau tells it."

But Billy was a good-hearted sort and the best thing about him was that if you wanted to know anything, all you had to do was pour the drink down his throat. That is, when he didn't bring it himself.

It was coming up to four in the morning when Ned woke to find himself lying on the chesterfield. The wind howled outside and the room was dark, but there was enough light from the flickering hurricane lamp in the corner for him to see that his uncle was asleep but Old Billy was in the wing chair wide-awake and thinking.

"Billy?" he whispered.

"What is it, boy?"

"My Da was going on 'bout a monster before. In his raving."

"Was he now?"

"Yeah."

"And you're wanting to know iffen it's real, I take it?"

"Yeah."

"I shouldn't, boy," Billy said, "boy" coming out as "by" with his accent. "It's not a tale yer Mam would be wantin' ye to hear. Flay the skin right off've me, the woman would, as like as not."

Ned listened to the snow striking the window. "It's real, though, isn't it?" he asked quietly after a time.

"That it is, me son. That it is."

"Please tell me."

"Ain't much of a tale. Not really."

"Tell me anyway."

Billy nodded. "It was back in '12, when yer Da, Frank and I were on the _Guinevere_. Ah, my lad, but that was a darlin' boat! Last of the sail-rigged, not a steam trawler like what we have now. A steel-hulled ketch, and could make as sweet a turn as fleet-footed young lass at a dance, but dependable as the rock of Gibraltar. And the fish! Oh, me son, the Grand Banks ain't as they used to be."

"The monster was in the water, then?" young Ned interrupted, eager to keep the old man on topic. _The thing! The thing in the water! _his brain shouted with excitement.

"Aye. Like I said, this was back in '12, not long after that fancy ship sank. You know the one - out on its maiden voyage."

"The _Titanic_?"

"That's it. Oh, a sad thing it was. Knew a mate on the Mackay-Bennett when she was commissioned to go looking for all them what didn't make it. He told me they brought home more than twice the number of bodies they'd canvas wrappings for, and that weren't even a tenth of them what were lost. And they'd buried almost half of them what they'd found at sea on top of that. You couldn't brings in bodies that weren't embalmed, and they'd run out of the necessaries. Still, there were so many them down in Halifax they had to set up a morgue in a curling rink. Oh yes, I tells ye, boy, it was a right sad, sad thing.

"Any road, we'd been pulling up debris from the poor girl - beams, paneling, a broken deck chair and the like - in the nets every so often, but no bodies, not till then, any rate."

"When?" Ned asked.

"Mid-June or thereabouts. Memory's hazy these days, Neddy. But I do recall it were weeks later. Far too long for…that."

"What?"

"It was caught face-down in the nets with the cod. Archie Balfour was the first to spot it. Lord t'undering, but that man was slow as molasses in winter! Wonderful mechanic - could put the arse back in a cat - but not much good for anything else. Thought it was a black shark we'd caught even after the body sort of slid down and one of its arms got freed. Boy was down right gleeful thinking we'd caught the first fish with limbs!"

Ned couldn't help but snicker, despite everything.

"And Lord, when he finally saw what it really was, well my eardrums were fair bleedin' from the racket! Then the poor sod nearly fell arse foremost over the rail, panicked as he was. I was so busy grabbing the fool that I didn't see what he was making a time over till the Captain told us to open the net.

"Sure and it were a body, all right. A thin lad, maybe mid-20s. 'Tween the black hair and the black fancy evening duds he had on, didn't seem to be any colour on him but that one white hand and collar.

" 'Turn the poor devil over,' Captain Allen ordered, 'let's see what we've got.' We did and some of us younger ones flinched when it suddenly flopped over and we saw the face on it. As pale-grey as frozen milk and sort of hard looking, though you'd expect that with a body what's dead and probably freezed up solid. Still…

"Yet it were the eyes what really got to me. They were open. An icy-blue, practically glowing in that awful white face, yet cloudy with death. Fixed and staring at nothing. Staring and empty, with pupils - that's the black part - the size of dimes.

"I'll tell you, boy, the whole thing was a puzzle right from the start. As your Da and a couple of others picked the thing up and took it down into the hold, I heard Eamon from Gambo telling Tetchy Jake how it didn't look like no drowned body he'd ever seen.

" 'How's that?' I asked him.

" 'Ain't got that bloated, waxy look to it like a body what's been in the water a long time has,' he said.

" 'How do you know it's been in the water a long time?' I asked. Hadn't thought on it none, but I shoulda realized a body dressed like that wasn't no fisherman off'en any trawler.

" 'It's got to be from that there ship - the Titanic. Heard tell a liner found a body just last month.' He was going to say something else, but then we heard a series of screams from the hold.

"We raced down there… And… I don't knows how to say it."

"What?" Ned gasped.

"The damned thing was sitting up."

"Sitting up?" Ned hissed, just barely stopping himself from letting out a shout to wake the house. "Whadda ya mean, sitting up?"

"Jist what I said. Cursed thing was sitting there big as life in the corner of an empty store room in the hold, all spooky-like, with its eyes still fixed in his head and looking like they were covered with a layer of frost."

"Then what happened?" a wide-eyed Ned asked.

"Not much. It just kept sitting there, not moving anymore, not even those eyes, and not a sound out of it. It would blink every so often, but not near as often as a living man would do."

"What did you do?"

"To be honest, we just kept staring back at it. Archie was crying, he was so frightened. We didn't know what to do with it. Some of the crew thought we were cursed. They wanted to beat it to a pulp and then toss back into the water, but the Captain said no. Said it was just gas rising in the corpse, making it sit up like that. Said there weren't no reason not to give the poor devil a proper Christian burial.

" 'We gonna bury him at sea, Cap? Rules say we can't take in no body what's not been embalmed,' Jim the cook reminded him.

" 'We'll see to that in the morning,' the Captain said. But he was fearful too and I think half the reason he didn't want to see it beat was he didn't want it confirmed that the thing was already dead and yet still moving 'round.

"So we sailed for three days with that thing in the hold. Never moved once, 'cept to blink, which to my mind shot the Cap's idea of body gases into a cocked hat, but there was no telling him that. Fisherman are like sailors - a superstitious lot - and the Cap was shaken bad. He'd forgotten 'bout the embalming for one. And the hold was bare except for that one day's catch. That and… _it._

"Nobody was at the wharf when we came in, and we were grateful for that. We were as silent as it was as Cap got out the gangplank and then opened the door to the hold.

"That sound, Ned… the sound of the thing getting to its feet and shuffling its way past us… ain't none of us as didn't shudder with horror. It stumbled past us, still with that empty stare, and climbed out of the boat. We watched walk down the wharf and away down the lane, none of us breathing till it was out of sight. Then… then it was like something shifted and half the crew broke and ran, never to be see in these parts again. Heard some moved to Labrador or thereabouts, and a few went to the cities, but the only one I ever saw again was Dick Barnett; he'd gone and went to be a cobbler in St. John's."

"But what happened to the body?" Ned asked in shock.

"Don't rightly know."

Ned felt there was something wrong here; this didn't feel like a ghost story. And then he remembered the fear in his father's and uncle's eyes. Anxiousness took a cold grip on his stomach. "You're telling me nobody knows?"

"No, boy, and that's what keeps a number of us from sleep to this day. I can't hardly go into the bush without wondering if the thing is there watching me. Wish we'd taken the bloody thing and chopped its damn head off!"

The old man looked seriously at the boy. Outside, dawn was approaching.

"I'll tell you something more too, Ned. Yer Da and me, we went and looked at it one night while it was sitting in the hold. That room were dark, but you could still see the thing's eyes…

"Because they were glowing gold."

.

* * *

_Author's note:_

_Three guesses as to who our mystery monster was? Anyway, my apologies to those - like me - who don__'__t care for OC heavy stories, but the idea that over the course of fifteen centuries there would__ have to be times when immortality would be damned hard to explain has been stuck in my head for awhile now. I figure if Merlin was on the _Titanic_, he wouldn__'__t take a place in the lifeboats (though I suppose I could have given him a lifebelt), so the only option was that he__'__d have to float around in the ocean until he was either picked up or made it to shore. And, while unable to die, six weeks of freezing water, no drinking water, no food and constant exposure to the elements would likely put him in _some _kind of physical distress. _

_So I hope you enjoyed it, even without our regular players. And my sincere apologies to all Newfoundlanders for the accents used. Sorry if they__'__re inaccurate and completely over the top. I__'__ve tried my best, but there__'__s not a lot of guides out there for Depression era Newfoundland speech and I had to make do with a few cheesy videos on you tube and my own tin ear. _


	11. The To Do Lists of the Immortals

**The To Do Lists of the Immortals  
**

**.  
**

* * *

**.  
**

They started finding them everywhere. Small pieces of parchment which they found on Merlin's cupboards, his desk, his walls, his table tops and sometimes even the seat of his chairs. Once they even found one stuck to the cat, though from the way Merlin was looking for the thing, it was likely he hadn't actually put it on the animal.

"What is it?" Arthur asked Percival the first time they pulled one off of the door to Merlin's ice box. It was a sheet about the length of his hand, but not quite as wide, and it seemed to have lines on it.

"I'm not certain, Sire. I think it's parchment, but it's like nothing I've ever seen before. And it's _blue_."

Arthur took it from the knight and examined it. "How was it affixed there? I don't see any pin or wax."

"It's a bit sticky on the back. Here, just at the top. See?"

Arthur touched his finger to it. "Hmm." He turned to his knight, who along with Gwen and Gaius were the best at reading this new language, and asked, "What does it say?"

Percival did his best to read out Merlin's hasty scribble:

_**TO DO**_

_**- Buy a globe! (They don**__**'**__**t even know about the Americas! Or China! Or Africa!)**_

"What's the Americas?" Arthur wondered.

Percival's brow furrowed. "Some kind of wine?" he suggested, thinking maybe that "globe" was related to "goblet".

That was the first note they found, but not the last, and they all seemed like the ramblings of a madman.

_**SWIMMING? Would give them something to do. (NOTE TO SELF: Hide camera! Do not need 600 more pictures of Gwaine**__**'**__**s various body parts!) Also would keep them in shape and let them meet people without having to talk to them a lot. Know Knights know how to swim, but what about Gaius and Gwen? BLIMEY! Will have to buy them bathing suits! And then convince them to WEAR bathing suits! Out in public! Think Gaius**__**'**__**s head will explode!**_

Another day it was:

_**MUSIC! They**__**'**__**re going to have to know who Bach and Beethoven and the Beatles are. But how much? The famous names, yes, but anything more? What does your average 25 year old know today? I know Chuck Berry because I lived through the fifties, but will their peers today think a small thing if they don**__**'**__**t, or rush to put them in a psych ward? And ART? Van Gogh, Picasso, etc. Take them to a museum? Tell them about lifts first - don**__**'**__**t need another incident like the shopping centre thing!**_

"What's a muss-eem?" Gwaine asked Arthur.

"I don't know, but it sounds girly," Arthur replied.

"This one looks better," Elyan said, spotting Gogmagog sleeping on Merlin's desk chair with a slip about to fall off of his ear.

_**SEX! They need to know about AIDS and condoms and the sexual revolution! Especially Gwaine! **_

"What does he mean, 'especially Gwaine?' " the shaggy-haired knight asked indignantly.

"Maybe he thinks you've been bragging all these years in order to hide some glaring problems with technique?" Arthur suggested with a smirk.

"Oh yeah, Princess? Well, what about this one?" Gwaine asked, ripping yet another note from the wall.

_**BUY BELL FOR GOGMAGOG! BLOODY THING KEEPS SCARING THE PANTIES OFF HIS PRATTISHNESS!**_

Arthur glowered. "Pardon me, gentlemen, but I have a warlock to kill," he said as he stalked off to hunt down a certain sorcerer.

"You can't kill an immortal man!" Gwaine called after him with a laugh.

Some were completely incomprehensible. Gaius was thankfully able to sort out _**MOON LANDING! TELESCOPES! **_(though Arthur did wonder briefly if the man's age reversal had addled his brain - a man on the moon?), but even the former physician was stumped by the extremely short and yet extremely inexplicable _**ZOO?**_

But others were more ominous:

_**Will we need a shelter? Should I stockpile food? **_

And:

_**Guns? NO!**_

_**But what if**_

"What if… what?" Arthur wondered. The unfinished thought made him shiver; that he couldn't even begin to imagine what Merlin was speculating on frightened him more than any plainly stated scenario would have.

Eventually the others grew accustomed to finding these odd messages littering Merlin's home, putting it down as one more eccentricity the warlock had developed in the time they'd been apart, but a growing dread began to overtake Arthur. The more notes he read, the more he began to understand how anxious Merlin was growing about their ability to fit into the modern world.

And it was a dread that took firm hold the night Merlin collapsed.

One moment they'd all been clearing the dishes from the table after supper, the next there was the sound of a crashing plate and they'd turned to see Merlin's eyes roll back in his head and his knees buckle. Gwaine dashed to catch him but missed and Merlin's head hit the floor with an ugly sound.

Arthur and Gaius were quickly at the fallen man's side. Gaius felt for Merlin's pulse while Arthur chaffed his friend's cheek and ordered him to wake up.

"Gaius, his skin's like ice!" Arthur said.

"His pulse is erratic," Gaius reported and then lifted one of Merlin's lids to examine his eyes. Arthur flinched to see it glowing gold.

"He's like he was after he fainted when the Callieach first opened the veil," Lancelot said. Arthur shot a resentful glance at his former knight - things were still a little strained between them for several reasons - but said nothing when Gaius nodded in agreement.

"I believe Lancelot's right. I wish I knew some modern potion to give him, but we'll have to settle for warming him up. Percival, if you would be so kind?" Gaius asked, gesturing for the knight to pick Merlin up. "Gwen, could you fetch the hot water bottle from the cupboard under the sink in the lavatory? Oh, it won't look like ours - it's red and looks like a thick wineskin. Merlin said it's made of something called rubber."

Gwen nodded and ran off to find it while the others trailed behind Percival as he carried Merlin upstairs.

-x-

Arthur had been sitting in the dim room for some hours before Merlin began to stir.

"Mmm...Arthur? Is that you?"

"Shh, you'll wake Gaius," the King said softly, pointing to the next bed. Merlin turned his head and Arthur smiled at the man's sleepy grin at the sight of his former guardian resting against the headboard, completely dead to the world, with his reading lamp still on and a Home Medical guide and one of Merlin's magic books both sprawled open on his lap.

"What time is it?" Merlin asked groggily.

"Uh… looks to be about two in the morning," Arthur said, still not quite used to reading clocks. "How do you feel?"

"Tired." Merlin answered, then he blinked and seemed to wake up a little bit more. "Why are you in my room? What happened?"

A small grin tugged at Arthur's cheek. "You don't remember fainting like a great big girl? Some immortal man you are."

"Immortal doesn't mean I never get sick," Merlin said seriously, not taking the bait. "Wait… I fainted? When?"

"Just after dinner. As to fainting, well… we're not sure. Gaius and Lancelot thought you might have had a vision. Did you?"

Merlin tried to remember. "I don't think so, not quite. But…I think I felt something. Like a shock wave - "

"A what?"

"I'll explain it tomorrow. There was a shock wave, and a loud noise, and then all I remember was being cold."

"Something's coming, isn't it?" It was more a statement than a question.

Merlin met Arthur's gaze. "I honestly don't know. I assume so, but what it is or when it's coming or even _if _it's coming… _I just don__'__t know_. I've been searching ever since you all came back - reading all the news I can find, reaching out with my mind, even teleporting to some places in order to get a better feel… but I still don't have a clue!"

"Calmly, Merlin. We'll figure it out. But now you need to rest." Arthur wanted more than anything to tell his closest friend to stop risking his life - well, his health anyway - with such dangerous activities, but he knew he couldn't. Merlin had to do this. It wasn't fair, the price to his friend was too high, but Merlin was trapped because there was no one else who could do the things that needed to be done. _Just like he had to wait for us, _Arthur thought bitterly. _Just like he has to teach us and guide us now._

"I know," Merlin conceded, bringing a hand up to rub tiredly at his forehead. "But there's simply so much to do!"

"Then start with the latest note," Arthur told him.

"Pardon?"

Arthur waved a hand, gesturing to his friend's left side. A puzzled Merlin raised his other arm to find a blue slip of paper attached to his sleeve.

_**SLEEP NOW, IDIOT**_

Merlin chuckled, but then groaned.

"What is it?" Arthur asked.

"Remind me in the morning to show all of you what a safety pin is."

.

* * *

_Thought I would say thank you to all of my wonderful readers with a teeny tiny bit of Merlin whump and a touch of Merlin/Arthur friendship. Hope you enjoyed it!_


	12. Jack

_Author's note: This one is a bit grisly, so fair warning. I almost considered not putting it up because it's sort of jarring when considered with some of the comedy pieces._

**Jack**

**.  
**

* * *

**.  
**

**November 9, 1888**

Merlin, once of the fabled Camelot - or William Greyson (close as he could get to Gaius's son) as he was known in this time - had a fashionable home in Belgravia, several summer houses throughout the country, and spent his time in a glittering world of operas and theatre where titled gentlemen chased after wealthy American heiresses. It was a life of pageantry and privilege, the Gilded Age, and yet at this moment, close to 4:00 in the morning, here he was to be found stalking through the sordid streets of Spitalfields, the worst criminal rookery in the city of London.

It was a terrifying, hellish place, this mean and bleak parish in the Whitechapel district. A place forgotten by the Gods. A surreal, nightmarish world of swirling lantern light or brazier fires casting spectral flickers against the fog and pollution in the air, where a great seething mass of humanity was crammed one on top of another in dark, huddled low houses. An benighted place where dark streets led off into a thousand darker, twisting alleyways, where all the arches were damp and dripping and the air was pervaded by an ever-present stench from the sewage and rubbish that people simply threw in the street. A world of furtive shadows and crumbling walls and the constant racket of people crying, screaming and brawling in the streets.

If Merlin was known to any in this area, it was as the kindly doctor who sated his upper class guilt by volunteering in a clinic once a week to treat the broken arms and split lips of women whose men folk liked to discipline with their hands, none guessing for a moment how familiar he himself was with poverty. Others - strangers - might have pegged him as some toff slumming by looking to get his leg over with one of the cheap slatternly whores the district was known for, but neither was true.

He'd been on a mission. Spitalfields, along with crime and degradation, possessed a high number of pawn shops, mostly run by immigrants from Eastern Europe, where oftentimes books came in which were of frank interest to an ancient warlock.

Magic books.

Some of these he read, but others he searched out in order to put them in a place of safety, for some of these books could be highly dangerous. This particular one he wasn't sure about; he definitely felt the magic radiating off of it as it lay snug in its hiding place beneath his greatcoat, but was it malevolent in and of itself or was it merely powerful, the evil coming more from the nature of those who used it?

Whatever it was, it was certainly having an affect on his own magic. His sensitivity as a seer - never as strong as the legends suggested in comparison to his other powers - was pulsing through him tonight, racing to break free. There were no actual visions, but…

There, for instance, by that public house he just passed - The Ten Bells! Something had happened. Coming to a stop, he focused his power on the spot.

A woman. He did not see her exactly, but what happened came to him all the same, the knowledge suddenly just _there_ in his head as though through intuition. She'd stood there, waiting for a customer. A man had come forward and they'd gone off together.

Such a thing was hardly a rare occurrence - even now there was a heavily made up woman, reeking of gin and staggering her way towards him with a calculating leer - so why was this different? Why did _this_ instance send such a chill through him? Merlin dashed away, not noticing the angry look on the present woman who'd been counting on him as a customer, nor her sneering dismissal of him as a "lily-livered pup, likely a pouf n' all."

A mindless compulsion drove Merlin urgently, his quick stride nearly breaking into a run as he followed the psychic trail. Down Commercial Street he rushed, heedless of where he was going. Past Brushfield, then down Dorset Street, faster and faster, an oily, slick feeling roiling in his stomach as the foulness of what he was sensing grew.

He came to a halt at Miller's Court, at the back of 26 Dorset.

Merlin could _feel_ the man's insanity. It buzzed and undulated like a massive swarm of feeding insects in his mind. Crossing the street swiftly, he ducked into a shadow. All senses open now, he probed outwards mentally as he crept towards the source of the evil.

The monster was busy, fully concentrating on his grotesque work, unaware someone was closing in.

Merlin reached his mind out further. There was an overlay of extreme terror still resonating, but it was like a fading stain on the cobblestones and decaying walls, not bursting with energy like something alive anymore. _She__'__s dead, then, _he realized.

Bile churned in his gullet as he followed the intangible path to number 13. A window was broken by the entrance, so he stuck his hand through the hole to unlatch the door from the inside. As he did, he was struck by another intuitive picture of the woman herself doing the same thing many times before because she'd lost her key. It was a small, human glimpse into the woman's life and it made him feel a connection to her for a moment.

It was a single, furnished room, maybe twelve-foot square, with a bed, three tables and a chair, and a painting above the fireplace. Poor though it was, in an area where hundreds shoved together in common lodging houses, paying tuppence for the right to sleep standing up between two ropes, it could probably have been counted as half-decent. But this was not the first thing Merlin saw.

The fire was raging brightly in the grate (later he would read that it'd been fueled by the victim's own clothes and would wonder why such an irrelevant fact stuck so stubbornly in his mind forevermore). Silhouetted against the light it cast was a blood-soaked creature in a leather apron, holding a knife more than half a foot long and goggling dumbly at the apparition of Merlin in the doorway.

Without even a conscious thought or the tiniest spike in his power, Merlin stopped time.

Revulsion surged in an instant and Merlin nearly screamed. In a life nearly fourteen hundred years long, he'd never seen anything like this. Battles, wars, even torture, but this gruesome exhibit was frenzied, degrading… _inhuman_. For the first time, he regretted ever becoming a doctor - it made the horror all that much more terrible to see when he could name the exact anatomical ravages that had been perpetrated on this poor soul.

The thing - the _woman_ - was lying naked and exposed in the middle of the bed, her head turned on the left cheek. Blood saturated the bedclothes and soaked the floor in a large puddle. The carnage was hideous; 'eviscerated' was the only word Merlin could come up with for what had happened to her. Her breasts had been sliced off and removed, and the inter-costals between the fourth, fifth and sixth ribs cut through, leaving the contents of the thorax visible, except for the heart, which appeared to be missing. The surface of her abdomen from the costal arch to the pubes had been cut off (_oh Gods, and were those flaps of tissue and muscle what was sitting on the table?_), and the abdominal cavity emptied of its viscera. The poor creature's right thigh had been denuded in the front to the bone and the left thigh stripped of skin fascia and muscles to the knee. Her arms and the calves of her legs had been mutilated with jagged cuts and her neck cut through right down to the vertebrae. _And her face, oh her face! _he cried inwardly at the sight of it - hacked almost completely off, it was though the monster had robbed her of more than just her life - he had taken her very claim to being a human being, to being a person who lived and loved and walked the Earth like everyone else.

Merlin looked to the man, this monster. Leather Apron, he was called.

Jack the Ripper.

Rationality fled the warlock's mind and he released his hold on time. His eyes blazed gold and the fire leaped from the grate like a living thing, leaving the monster Jack to scream and writhe as he burned.

It took but a heartbeat for the magical fire to consume the monster so fully that not even ash remained.

_-x-_

Merlin had no memories of events afterwards until some hours later, when he came back to senses to find himself caught up in the crowds watching the spectacle of the annual Lord Mayor's Day celebrations.

As the Lord Mayor passed in his gilded equipage on his way to Westminster to be presented to the Lord Chief Justice, Merlin reflected on his unwitting role as executioner.

Sin was a nebulous concept to Merlin. He understood it as matter of right or wrong, but was less clear of how he felt towards it as an offence to a higher power. Therefore, in the midst of the cheering crowds, he found himself evaluating his actions as per his own being and judgement rather than anything else.

He knew that setting himself up as judge, jury and executioner was a dangerously slippery slope and certainly not one he was comfortable with. Not to mention a significant part of him wondered if he was truly naïve or not to believe that killing was always wrong, no matter what.

Yet he could not deny that destiny had thrown him into the role more than once. He'd been but seventeen and barely in Camelot a day the first time he'd killed someone. Yes, he'd done it to protect Arthur, and yes, he'd had no time to think of anything better, but that still didn't change the facts. He had _killed_ Mary Collins. Could he have done something else? Perhaps. However - while he didn't want to fall on the excuse that in some situations there was no choice _at all_ - in this hard world those choices were sometimes very small and there was no denying that hesitation could kill. Especially when protecting yourself or others.

But was that what this was? Yes, he'd stopped a monster, just as he'd often done before. But this monster was a man and it wasn't quite self-defence. Nor was it exactly saving someone in immediate danger. Undoubtedly, Merlin had saved the lives of the women the monster might have gone on to kill, but he also couldn't forget that once a man takes the law into his own hands, it is so easy to become a monster oneself. And with his magic and immortality that was already a narrow tightrope to walk.

So what was the answer? In all his many, many years, Merlin had never fully decided. Were there times when he had, if not a right to kill, then at least a pass not to avoid it? Was destroying monsters perhaps even his destiny? Why else had he been given a tremendous power and then thrown into so many situations where it was called for? What, after all, had lead him to the scene of the horror last night but this gift from the Gods? If the Gods wished him to resist the temptation, then why put him in circumstances where his killing someone protected the innocent?

The crowds began to disperse and Merlin started off to make his weary way home, mind still turning over and over. It was an old question: what was right, to kill to protect or to stay true to the values he felt important? How could he have saved Arthur - by being a better man or a harder one? In that one idea was the answer to his existence, to his very purpose in life, and yet it was still unknowable.

In the end, he settled for the bare facts. What sort of person he should be would be tomorrow's question; right now, the only regrets he felt about what he'd done the night before were practical ones. Namely, that by foolishly incinerating the body of the monster, there was now no way to tell the authorities and alleviate the fears of the city. He was also worried that someone innocent might be taken in for the Ripper's crimes and so he vowed to watch the papers for news.

But, until then, Merlin searched within and determined that he was still - mostly - the same man as before. Over the centuries, he'd become more of a supernatural being, finding it harder and harder to relate to the dying mortals around him at times, but he was essentially the same soul he'd ever been. Idealists weren't saints. _"__There is not a righteous man on Earth, who does what is right and never sins.__"__* _Everyone slipped, sometimes grievously, but that didn't have to change the core nature of their being. Not if they didn't let it by growing complacent or arrogant.

He reached his front door, but then paused.

"Ah, but that's the thing, isn't it?" he sighed.

He let himself in.

.

* * *

* Ecclesiastes 7:20


	13. The Weight of Endless Years

_Author's note: Warning: some language. And this will likely be true for other chapters, so for those who are bothered by it, this is just to let you know since I may not bother with future warnings._

**The Fractures Caused By the Weight of Endless Years**

**.**

* * *

**.**

He nearly broke when, one by one, they slowly emerged from the silvered mirror-like waters of the Lake of Avalon and made their processional way up to him on the shore with barely a ripple left in their wake.

He should have felt joy, but instead he felt like he was falling down a gorge.

Silently he watched as they exclaimed over each other, a weeping Gwen throwing herself into Arthur's arms, Leon and Percival clapping a mystified Elyan and Gwaine on the back, the mutual astonishment of Lancelot's appearance and then finally the confusion of the strange, auburn-haired man that nobody recognized until he rushed at Merlin with a happy cry of "My boy! Oh, my boy!".

Only Merlin noticed how his hands trembled as he embraced his surrogate father after fifteen centuries. Quickly he pushed his shock down inside him and hid it behind the walls around his heart.

They were full of questions as he lead them through the night to his home, but he forestalled them, telling them to wait until they arrived.

For a moment, when in the pale light of the hall he turned to face them and saw them damp and dripping in their tunics and chain mail and long robes and looking so unbelievably goddamned _alien_, he faltered. There seemed to be a screaming sound in his head.

But there were dry clothes to sort out and beds to find and people to be fed and so the provider in him took over. Merlin made sure they were warm and then put the whole group of them to bed. Then, unbeknownst to them, he spelled them to sleep for the next three days while he wept continuously and drank himself into red-eyed numbness, desperately swigging straight from the bottle while his mind shouted that it was physically incapable of reconciling their presence after a millennium and a half without them.

He learned then that, even when you receive the thing you most wished for in the world, it can still be irreparably tainted by the sheer length of the wait.

_-x-_

They didn't understand how long it had been. How could they? Even he hadn't known what it would be like before it happened to him. In their time, the general population's knowledge of the past only extended back a century or two. For them, time hadn't existed before the Roman Occupation. The colossal weight of fifteen hundred years pressing down on Merlin meant even less to them than it would have to the people in this era.

"Where are the others?" he asked Lancelot after he found the man tending to him on the night he'd found out his friend Harry had died.

"Probably still out looking for you," Lancelot said as he gently toweled the rain off of Merlin's hands.

"You shouldn't have done it, you know."

Lancelot stopped and looked at Merlin. "What, looked for you? Whatever else would we have done?"

"No. You shouldn't have sacrificed yourself. You shouldn't have walked through the Veil."

"Merlin, my friend, you know it had to be me."

"It might have been my only chance at mortality," Merlin said hollowly.

That he'd worried Lancelot with these words he figured out when the larger man suddenly clutched him in a fierce and painful bear hug, but however he tried, Merlin could not seem to hug him back.

He had thought their return would alleviate his loneliness, but now he just prayed it would end his time on Earth.

_-x-_

Everyone fought with one another. Arthur couldn't pretend to be comfortable with Lancelot, despite Merlin's explanation of it being a shade who kissed Gwen. Gwaine and Elyan felt left out and pushed aside when they found out about Merlin's magic. Gwen and Arthur, once they were over the brief but glorious honeymoon of being reunited, were having a hard time adjusting to the difference in their ages as well as the fact that Gwen had ruled Camelot for over forty years, decades longer than Arthur's short reign. Gaius and Merlin too were having trouble with their new roles and at times things were strained and awkward between them. And Arthur, despite knowing of Merlin's gifts and hearing all that he had done, still did not always see him as an equal.

Even Gwen and Merlin - rather foolishly thought of as the gentlest ones by the others who constantly forgot their decades of leadership - argued bitterly with each other at times. One day when Gwen, out of sorts after a tiff with Arthur, rather condescendingly demanded of Merlin in a sickly sweet voice where the sweet boy she'd once known had gone, Merlin had raised an eyebrow and icily asked back where the sweet girl _he__'__d_ once known had gone.

She drew herself up rigidly. "I was _Queen_."

None were prepared for how imposing, and even frightening, Merlin could be when he stood tall and coldly raised his voice to proclaim, "And I am _King_ of the Druids and the greatest sorcerer to walk the Earth. I spent every day in Camelot in constant danger for my own life, all to save the Kingdom from its greatest threats, and have lived through _fifteen hundred years of Hell ever since_, all to serve you once again. So tell me, _my Queen_, how you can be so _blind _as to not see the truth as to what I am even now?"

Gwen slapped him. Hard. But then she burst into tears and threw herself at him. His arms came up around her as she begged his forgiveness, but he could not quite bring himself to smile.

_-x-_

He had always presumed he would have developed some sort of detachment after all of these years. That - whether through supernatural wisdom or even just simple age - he'd be ready, that he'd be able to rise above his emotions and pain and be the all-knowing counsellor, sagely guiding his King through the daily challenges of life in this new world. Hell, there was a whole literary archetype based on him being that very image.

Instead, he spent his time trying to escape from bouts of morbid self-pity in which he wondered if the universe itself saw him as a lesser being. When he'd tried showing Arthur how to do laundry and Arthur had blithely insisted it was his job, Merlin had railed at his King for nearly a half an hour about democracy and the need for Arthur to be strong in the disaster to come and "even more importantly, most adults in this time are expected to goddamn learn to shift for themselves, you ungrateful bastard!"

But truthfully, he couldn't help but wonder if he actually is such a lowly creature that being Arthur's servant is somehow all he deserves. How could he believe anything else when he considered Destiny had kept him enslaved all this time only to once more force him to be there for _Arthur,_ to do everything for _Arthur_, to protect _Arthur_.

Why that should be and what he could have ever possibly done to deserve such punishment, he could only guess at, but one thing was obvious: two sides of the coin they might be, but obviously he was the worn down, less valuable side.

_-x-_

There was so much to teach them he often had nightmares - they didn't know to be wary of guns, that cigarettes were bad for them, that sex could kill - but this evening they had begged for some time off from his endless lessons and he'd agreed. So they were relaxing now while Merlin played the piano.

He was quite good - after nearly two centuries he'd more than completed the theorized ten thousand hours of practice it supposedly took to be good at something - and they applauded enthusiastically despite the fact the music was all so strange to them they had no way of judging it. Merlin smiled a little ruefully at himself when they had the same reaction to Beethoven as they did to the theme from the "Munsters", a silly American sitcom from the sixties that was featured in a book of novelty tunes he'd got a rummage sale. But for once he let it go and just enjoyed himself, not bothering to enlighten them with the history of music. He turned and was about to - pointlessly - ask for a request, when he abruptly found himself really taking them in for the first time that evening.

They were relaxed and chatting amiably, several with drinks in their hands. Gwaine was spread out the floor, laying on his side with his head resting on his hand and laughing at something Percival said. Gwen was snuggled up to Arthur and Gaius was smiling at Merlin with approval. They were happy and he felt a warm grin tugging at his cheek as he looked on.

Then suddenly it all changed. Rushing out of the room with a half-shouted excuse, once out of their sight he waved a hand and for the first time since the night of their arrival he forced them all to sleep.

Often it's when the ordeal is over that the trauma of it hits. He knew it was only logical; after all, when you're in the midst of something, to get out of it your focus must be firmly forward. But when it's done…_that_ is when life makes you look back and really see the horror of what you went through. He _knew _that, but it didn't help. Now that his loneliness should have been gone, maybe _was_ gone, the memories of fifteen centuries of came crashing down on him like a fallen tower.

For whatever reason, the spell had not hit Gwaine; whether Merlin had simply missed or Destiny had woken him, it didn't matter. Alarmed at Merlin's racing out and then everyone else dropping into an instant slumber, he dashed after the warlock and to his horror found the man collapsed on the floor of the lavatory, being sick into the bath.

Merlin, shaking fit to tear himself apart, turned to see who had followed and the Knight saw that his friend was on the verge of a shrieking hysteria.

"Are you all truly here?" Merlin begged. "I haven't gone completely mad?"

Gwaine was a man of action and didn't waste words asking foolish questions. Sitting down beside his old friend, he pulled the man to him and rocked him while he cried.

_-x-_

It was amazing how he could take care of things when he was so close to fainting.

When Gaius was knocked down the steps near the library by a skateboarder and cracked his head, knocking him out, Merlin called 999* on his mobile and escorted Gaius to the hospital. He remembered to give them Gaius's fake I.D. and patiently told the nurse all of his friend's information and then numbly answered all of the waiting police constable's questions about the incident.

After Gaius was examined and x-rayed, he was discharged, but not before Merlin listened to all of the doctor's instructions about watching for the signs of concussion. Merlin drove them home and ordered Gaius to bed. He fixed the others dinner while answering all of their frantic inquiries and then went up without a further word to sit by his foster father's bedside.

It wasn't long before Gwen came in. Not paying attention to her, he was startled when she put the back of her hand to his cheek.

"Merlin, you're as pale as a sheet and your skin is like ice. I want you to go with Arthur and let me watch Gaius." Merlin protested, but he was in a daze and she was able to prod him to the doorway where Arthur was standing and watching him. "Go on, now," she ordered him gently.

Arthur took him by the arm and lead him into the bedroom he and Gwen shared. Merlin felt the other man pushing him to sit and so he did. Arthur sat down beside him and draped a comforting arm across the warlock's shoulders.

"Tell me," Arthur said.

"What's going to happen to me when you all die and leave me again?"

"You'll come with us this time."

"There's no reason to believe that."

"Then believe _me_, Merlin," Arthur vowed. "I am not going without you. You won't be alone ever again."

Merlin shivered. He wanted to believe, but hope was too much of a brutal thing.

.

* * *

* The number for emergencies in Britain.


	14. Old Acquaintances

**Old Acquaintances**

**.**

* * *

**.**

**2010**

Merlin cocked his head and looked at the thing.

_That wasn__'__t here yesterday._

He recognized what it was, of course. Fifty years ago, blue Police call boxes had dotted the countryside, even on remote country lanes in Cornwall like this one.

But he'd only just returned to England after several decades abroad, so he shrugged it off, reckoning the object for an abandoned relic, or even one of the last hold-outs of the old technology being clung to firmly by some elderly lone constable. He passed without a further thought and continued on his way to the village to run his errands.

Still, he was sure he hadn't seen it the day before.

In any case, he'd put the mystery out of his mind when not five minutes later a body slammed into him and knocked him to the ground with a loud "Oof".

"Oh sorry, mate! Are you all right?" Merlin heard a voice say and he glanced up to see a young man, roughly his height, with light brown hair and blue eyes looking at him contritely.

"You!" Merlin laughed, wild joy bubbling up within him for the first time in years.

The other man looked at him, puzzled, and then his eyes widened. "You! I don't believe it! Oh here, let me help you up. Are you sure you're all right?"

"Are you joking? This is wonderful!" Merlin exclaimed, grabbing the man before him in a hearty embrace. "I haven't seen you in absolute ages!" The warlock drew himself up as he remembered something. "So it happened then? It opened?" he asked eagerly.

A smile was quickly replacing the somewhat hectic expression on the other man's face. "It did."

"Worth the wait?"

"Without a doubt!" the other man said, a remarkable light shining from his eyes. "How about you? Have they…?"

"Not yet, but I think it will be soon."

"I hope so."

Suddenly a gleeful voice cried out from behind Merlin. "Come on, Rory! Now's not the time to be chatting with friends! We've got a planet to save!"

The warlock turned around to see a lanky man in a bow tie and a red fez leaning out of the doorway to the Police Box and gesturing at his friend. A stunning red-head poked herself out beside him and, after smacking the man in the fez on the arm, called out, "Is he all right, Rory?"

Rory nodded and then said to Merlin, "You know, we could probably use your help on this one. Think you might want to come along?"

Merlin grinned. "Lead on, Centurion!"

The day was looking up.

.

* * *

_Just a short one this time, I'm afraid, but hopefully you all enjoyed it. I wanted to cross the two, but I was trying to think of a twist when I remembered "The Pandorica Opens" and realized that the Doctor wasn't the only long-lived person in the Tardis. Indeed, Rory with his long wait for a loved one actually had more in common with Merlin than the Time Lord. So, how did they meet? I figure Merlin's magic would sense the Pandorica in its hiding place and he went to investigate, thereby giving both men a bit of company. And I liked the idea of Rory introducing the Doctor to someone interesting for a change!_


	15. The Final Show

**The Final Show**

**.**

* * *

**.**

**1920**

_Mesdames et messieurs, bienvenue au Carnaval de Merveille!_

Here. It would end here.

_Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to introduce to you a man of marvels!_

Dozens of introductions from over the years resounded in his head. He'd played everything from traveling sideshows to the Orpheum circuit, and now was on the cusp of fame to rival the greats: Houdini, Kellar, Charles Carter.

_Boys and girls, please gather round and prepare to enter a world of mystery and MAGIC!_

But of course that would not do. Nor was it something he was sure he wanted.

Still…

In the orchestra pit, one hundred musicians played him on, and the man in the white tie and tails, with the top hat and cape with the dark blue and silver lining, entered from stage left, hand in hand with his comely assistant. Letting go of her hand as the spotlights hit them, he pulled a rose - an actual rose, not a fold-up cloth bouquet - uncrushed from his sleeve and threw it up into the air. With a swing of his arm and a sudden snapping clasp of his hand into a fist, the rose disappeared in a "poof" and changed into a dove in mid-air. Then the man threw his arms wide as if to embrace the audience and from behind his pointed goatee, he flashed his widest, wickedest, most mischievous grin.

"_My friends,__" _he laughed wildly, _"__sit tight! Because you are going to get one Hell of a show tonight!__"_

_-x-_

Ironically, the first time Merlin ever enjoyed hiding his true nature was at the exact same time he came closest to revealing the truth. It was a bittersweet enjoyment to be sure, displaying the purest part of him for the purposes of tawdry stage tricks, not to mention that the more he used magic the harder and harder it became to hold himself back, but the point was that_ he did get to use it. _Because it was so hard with his gifts fairly pulsing in his blood every moment of the day, and always hiding it was twisting him inside, poisoning him like a still pond growing stagnant and boggy.

And well, it was also fun to enjoy the secret irony of a real warlock playing a stage magician.

Despite that gift, he had still point a point of learning all the stage craft: producing something from nothing, such as a rabbit from a hat; the simple vanishings; the transformations; the restorations; the teleportations and levitations and the solid through solid penetrations. He even dabbled in hokey escapes and the well-worn prediction routines like guessing the total amount of change in a spectator's pocket.

Oh yes, he learned it all. Then he added flairs of his own.

It was a fine line though. Kellar and Carter and the like had raised the bar; some of their illusions spectacular enough to make Merlin struggle with his rusty magic in the beginning just to equal their magnificent displays, but within a short time he'd also realized the dangers of being _too good _- that half the audience would scream and faint and think him the devil, and the other half would condemn him as a fake because his tricks were too over the top to possibly be real.

Merlin had to laugh at that: the more real he made things, the more fake he seemed. People in this time had such small imaginations.

But tonight it would end, fittingly enough at the Camelot Theatre, with its fake banners and plaster turrets and completely idiotic murals featuring a blond Guinevere and Lancelot and "Gawaine" as a baby-faced, freckled redhead. A fine place indeed for his last performance. And _this_, his final show was going to be a spectacle that no one would forget!

Except that everyone would.

_-x-_

"Oohs" and "ahs" and even a few outright cheers came from the audience as well over a dozen suits of armour were brought to life, but instead of chasing the hapless apprentice sorcerer character (Charlie, one of his assistants, who'd left the show a week ago with his employer's blessing to go to Electrician school) around the stage, this time the "knights" did battle with each other in a furious clash of sparking swords.

To stop them, the master magician (Merlin, quickly transforming from the tuxedoed dandy with the devilish grin to an old man in a flowing blue robe), shot out vine-like tendrils of flame to surround the knights. As the empty suits of armour slowed, the audience squirmed with the start of genuine fear, so the great wizard brought forth an amber-like slab with the picture of a dragon on it, and when he pulled the tiny, oh-so-adorable, white baby dragon made of mist from it, they forgot their discomfort and alarm in the face of the creature's delicate charm.

_Oh, my dear Aithusa__…_

The baby smoke dragon harried the suits of armour until they all collapsed in a pile, Merlin purposely making it them fall the way puppets would whose strings had been cut, and the audience, reassured by this seeming bit of fakery, clapped wildly.

On and on it went as the show progressed. The dresses of lady volunteers were transformed from one colour to another, boys were made to ride bucking chairs, and a little girl had a beautiful miniature tiara appear on her head that she got to keep.

Magic cabinet tricks appeared - a volunteer disappeared and when the door was re-opened, the cabinet was filled with sand from the Sahara. Rabbits were transformed into tiger cubs, and then back again. Multiple silver balls danced around scarves winding their way up to the ceiling as floating musical instruments played Ravel's "Bolero". Death-defying dagger tricks made the audience scream with terror and then with appreciation. A matronly woman, to her amazement and almost comical shock, found herself moved from a seat in the balcony to one up front in an instant. Swords were swung through Merlin's arm and then thrown through a solid brick wall.

All wonderful tricks, but hardly anything more fantastical than the audience could have seen somewhere else.

But the third act - "The Witch and the Warlock" - was where Merlin really got started.

The act was usually played as a competition, a battle royale between dueling sorcerers, both vying in a magical joust to win the position of Court Magician for some mythical sultan or Oriental potentate. Tonight, though, it was a real battle - witch and warlock fighting to the death to save or vanquish King Arthur's Court.

It was only a bit of re-staging for the location, not to mention his idea in the first place, but oh my, how it did _hurt. _

But the show must go on, as they say.

And so, for that one brief hour nearly fifteen hundred years after he'd entered the world, Merlin used his magic the way he'd always been meant to - openly and to the fullest (well, nearly) extent of his powers.

The audience sat wide-eyed and stunned as fireballs shot back and forth between Merlin - who was playing the Great Mysterioso who, in turn, was ironically playing "Merlin" - and his panicking assistant Elena who was playing "Morgan le Fay" - and was shocked and ready to scream in fright herself at the things she found herself doing.

Frozen strands of ice shot from Merlin's hands to encase "Morgan" like the bars of a cell, but green balls of flame shot back from her hands (Merlin's work too) and melted them. A shock wave rocked the theatre and the audience murmured dangerously. The circled each other, making attack after attack - water this way, rocks that, a tornado here, a bolt of lightning there. Knives shot at Merlin, who jumped on a rope and stood, balancing on it, as it flew away over the audience's heads. "Morgan" followed on a flying carpet and with a thrust of a sword she impaled Merlin in the stomach. Shrieks caught in the audience's throats as a white-as-a-sheet Elena could not keep herself from hacking Merlin into pieces and feeding them to the lion that had suddenly materialized on stage.

But Merlin was not done. With "Excalibur" he cut his way out of the lion's belly and went to make a final attack on "Morgan". The witch fled with a scream but Merlin chased her, the walls around the theatre dissolving to reveal the audience's teleportation to a snow-covered mountain top. The orchestra stopped playing as the musicians fumbled to their feet in terrified astonishment, only to find that, like the hysterical audience, their feet were glued to the floor.

The chase continued. Everyone in the theatre-that-was-no-longer-there watched Merlin pursue "Morgan" down the mountain, through a jungle, across a desert and even under the ocean. It was unconscionable to make so many innocents afraid, so as the grand finale approached, Merlin's magic expanded and a change came over the audience and orchestra and the back-stage hands.

Merlin was sharing the joy he felt as he let his magic loose, more loose than it had been in centuries, perhaps more loose than it had ever been before. Their hearts leaped with his as true, honest to goodness magic flowed all around them. Never had they felt so free, so light-hearted, so alive and flying!

And when, in a heart-stopping moment just when it looked like the witch might triumph, Merlin caught "Morgan" and the evil villainess disappeared in a geyser of blue fire, every throat cheered fit enough to bring the walls down!

Merlin, laughing and panting, stood straight and tall on the now restored stage and basked in the adulation for a long moment. His body glowed with the warmth of finally, _finally_ coming close to being the wizard he was supposed to have been for Arthur, the wizard from fairy tales.

But tears pricked at his eyes as he gave those gathered the last gift of a dancing candlelight display and then the shower of "pixie" dust that washed their memories clean of all but the most explainable parts of his act.

_If only__…_

One newspaper review several months before had gushed and pronounced him "a veritable Merlin".

A _veritable _Merlin.

Ah yes, sometimes there was nothing like a good bit of irony. The universe knew that too, it appeared.

He was the last to leave the theatre that night. His smile might have been brittle and his eyes red as he did, but he didn't forget one last thing.

The next day a number of cleaning ladies couldn't help but stare at the mural and wondered who on Earth had stayed up all night re-painting all the figures.

.

* * *

_I know I don't say it enough, but thank you all so much for your reviews! And again, hope you enjoyed!_


	16. How Many?

**How Many**

**.**

* * *

**.**

A strange light flickering across the wall of her and Arthur's bed chamber was what woke Gwen, but it was the sound of something coming up Merlin's wide gravel path (_drive_, she corrected automatically) that pulled her out of bed. Gracefully disentangling herself from Arthur's embrace, she padded silently to the window and pushed aside the light, lacy curtain.

Outside the darkness was only relieved by the lamp near Merlin's front door, casting its odd bluish light over the warlock himself as he strode quickly to the strange carriage that had appeared. Gwen looked on, biting her lip in puzzlement as she watched a young woman with an agitated look carefully lift a large bundle of goods out of the back part of the carriage (_no, a _car_, it__'__s a car_) and clutch it to her chest as she walked over to Merlin, who met her half way. Gwen watched as Merlin nodded reassuringly to the woman and told her something in hushed tones that Gwen could not make out. With one last look at the bundle, the woman then placed it tenderly in Merlin's arms and Gwen could have sworn she was crying as she opened the door to the passenger side of the carriage… _car_… and got in. Merlin, shifting the bundle to his left arm, waved awkwardly to the woman and to the man behind the wheel and then the carriage… _car_… backed out and drove off.

Gwen glanced at the clock on her night table. 2:12. _What in the world is Merlin having dropped off at two in the morning? _she wondered. She considered the possibility it had something to do with magic - Merlin's behind the scenes activities hardly seemed less mysterious than they had in their Camelot days, though she supposed that was only because she hadn't known what was going on then - but there had been something about that woman's movements, something about how she had held her bundle…

Gwen made her way downstairs and, in the homey light of the kitchen, her suspicions were confirmed. A smile lit her face. For there Merlin stood, rocking a baby in his arms and singing a lullaby under his breath.

"Merlin?" Gwen whispered as softly as she could, loathe to disturb the scene in front of her.

Merlin turned around. "Oh, hello, Gwen. What are you doing up? We didn't wake you, did we?"

"I'm afraid so," Gwen said, coming over to peer more closely at the sleeping child in her friend's arms, "but I don't mind a bit."

"Ah, Charlie, you lady-killer," Merlin chuckled at the baby, "Pulling them right out of their beds now! Heaven help the female population when you hit manhood."

"Who is he, Merlin?" Gwen asked, eyes still locked on the infant.

"Gwen, meet Charlie Parkhurst. Charlie, meet Guinevere, Queen of all the Britons."

Guinevere, Queen of all the Britons, snorted and smacked Merlin on the arm. "I'm pleased to meet you, Charlie Parkhurst," she told the sleeping baby. "But what's this all about, Merlin? Why is he here?"

"He belongs to my friends Susan and Hugh. Susan just got word her parents were in an accident while on holiday in France. She and Hugh are flying there tonight. They asked me if I could watch Charlie until Hugh's mum can get down here from Yorkshire."

"Oh, that's sweet of you. I hope your friend's parents will be all right."

"I hope so too. But till Granny comes, looks like your stuck with good old Martin, Charlie my lad. Aren't you, buddy? Yes you are!"

Gwen smiled again as she listened to Merlin's easy tone as he soothed the oblivious Charlie, but an inexplicable sadness began to burrow itself right around her heart. Perhaps it was a touch of guilt; hearing Merlin refer to himself as Martin, holding the child of friends the rest of them hadn't even known he'd had, made her realize that she'd never really considered the fact that Merlin had a life apart from them. He must have had friends before this, yet no one ever seemed to drop by. Oh, he'd occasionally talk to people on his far-speaking glass… _mobile phone_… but his life seemed so wrapped up in them. He fed them, clothed them, taught them, entertained them, and no doubt protected them, but what did he do for himself? Why did he not go out and meet with friends? Why was he not courting some lucky maid?

"Would you like to hold him?" Merlin asked, breaking Gwen out of her reverie. "I need to unpack some of his things."

"I'd love to. That is, if you're certain he won't fuss. He doesn't know me, after all."

"No, he's usually all right with strangers. Besides, he's dead to the world right now and Susan says he generally sleeps like the proverbial log."

Gwen laughed and reached out her arms eagerly. "All right then, hand the little charmer over."

And so the two friends moved into the living room and there they sat up till morning, waiting for Susan's mother-in-law to arrive and talking in a way they hadn't since before Gwen had fallen in love with Arthur. Charlie proved to be even more charming when he woke up close to six with a buoyant baby grin despite his being in a strange place. And by the time Arthur, Gaius and the knights finally roused themselves, Gwen had been thoroughly entranced by little Charlie's steady stream of smiles, giggles and jolly prattle.

Merlin and Gwen laughed till their sides hurt at the expression that crossed Arthur's face at the sight of her holding a baby.

"What… what is _that?_" the completely flummoxed monarch of Albion demanded.

"A baby, prat," Merlin informed him. "I know your upbringing was somewhat sheltered, but surely you've seen a tiny human before."

"But… but where did it come from?"

"Fairies left it on the doorstep for Gwaine," Merlin told them with an utterly straight face, causing Gwaine to yelp in panic.

"He's kidding, Gwaine," Gwen reassured the knight, while Charlie sat on her lap, clapping his tiny hands as Merlin made faces at him. "Merlin's just watching him for a friend."

Gwaine dropped a shaky hand on Merlin's shoulder. "Gods, mate, don't frighten me like that!" he said, but then immediately his mind turned to the next thing: breakfast. "Can we have eggs today, Merlin?"

Merlin and Gwen looked at each other and then snickered. "Keep watch over Charlie for me, would you Gwen? I'm afraid to let this lot fend for themselves when it comes to the stove."

"Of course, Merlin. It would be my pleasure."

As Merlin followed Gwaine and most of the others into the kitchen, Arthur sat down on the sofa beside her, a different look on his face than the sputtering shock he'd displayed upon first seeing her with the child. Gwen thought he looked almost wistful.

"He's a very handsome little lad," Arthur said, chucking his finger under the baby's chin. Charlie laughed in response and tried to grab the finger. Arthur grinned widely at his antics.

"Yes, indeed he is," Gwen agreed.

Arthur swallowed harshly. "I…"

"I know, Arthur," Gwen whispered, her voice breaking. "I wish it too."

They sat in silence for some time, each considering what might have been, until Gwen changed the subject by saying, "You know, Merlin is very good with him."

"Merlin? Well, I suppose I can see that. As hard as it is to picture the idiot as being capable, he does have the mind of a child to make up for it."

Gwen knew what Arthur was trying to do, but his customary teasing of Merlin seemed hollow to her, and perhaps to him as well, going by the look in his eyes. Merlin had proved to be stunningly capable, both in the past and now, and hinting otherwise only served to confront her with how blind they had all been. But more than that, it was that - despite the joy the warlock appeared to get being around Charlie - Merlin was no longer the light-hearted boy they had once known, and comparing him to that image made the painful truth of it strike her heart all the harder.

But it was later, when she and Arthur had followed Merlin into his bedroom so they could watch as he laid Charlie on the bed to get him dressed and Arthur had casually asked, "How come you never had children, Merlin?" that Gwen's sorrow almost became too much.

Because from the way Merlin's posture tightened ever so imperceptibly, the slight shudder that ran along his jawline, the quick way he diverted his King from the question, Gwen knew that Arthur had got it so very wrong.

Gwen had only been thinking about what they didn't know about Merlin in this life, but that was ridiculous. Merlin was over fifteen hundred years old.

_Surely, in all that time, there would have been__…_

A half an hour later, after Merlin had passed Charlie over to his grandmother, Gwen came up behind Merlin where was sitting on the step and wrapped her arms around his shoulders.

"Oh, my dear, dear, friend," she whispered. She kissed the top of his head, her tears falling into his hair. "How many were there?"

.

* * *

_Once again, my thanks to all my readers and reviewers. You are all too kind._


	17. St Gwaine's Day

_A little gift in honour of the day..._

**St. Gwaine's Day**

**.**

* * *

**.**

"Merlin, I have decided that today is not a day for work!"

The warlock raised an eyebrow at Gwaine's sudden declaration, instantly wary. "Is it not?"

"No. Today is a day for enjoyment. I wish to do something fun!"

"Are you aware you make demands and pronouncements the exact same way the prat does?"

Gwaine drew himself up to his most haughty. "I'm stung by your scurrilous comparisons between myself and her Princessness, so to make it up to me you will accede to my orders. Fun is what I wish and fun is what you shall give me."

A corner of Merlin's mouth twitched, but he restrained himself from laughing. "Well, I suppose I could take you for another ride in my plane."

"I think not."

"I could show you what a roller coaster is."

"That won't do."

"Take you out for ice cream?"

"Inadequate."

"We could do your reading lesson using the latest _Playboy_."

"You mean that book at the news agent's? With the...?" Then Gwaine remembered his mission. "No. While I admit that intrigues me, not today."

Merlin, knowing full well where this was going, just barely managed a smirk. "Oh, and what's so special about today, then?"

"It is - or so I am told by the magic scrying box and the man Guinness's painted shields that are hung about over all the village - a holiday."

"So it is."

"And, if I'm to understand it, it is a holiday that entails, nay, even requires us per ritual, to go to the tavern and celebrate the Gods' gifts of fermented beverages."

"Actually, it's to celebrate St. Patrick, the man who brought Christianity to Ireland," Merlin corrected.

"But we do that by enjoying parades and parties and pretty tavern wenches, do we not?"

Merlin bit his lip, still struggling to control himself; he'd forgot how artless Gwaine could be with his wheedling. (Or artful _with_ his artlessness, it was hard to tell.) "I suppose so," he said, "at least according to the marketing departments of various distilleries."

Gwaine slapped Merlin on the back. "So, by the Gods' great goat testicles, my friend, what exactly are we still doing here, locked up in the house? There's a whole world of taverns out there, Merlin, who have yet to become acquainted with the greatness that is Sir Gwaine of Camelot!"

"Gwaine..." Merlin began. He had seen where this was going, yet still not recognized the immensity of the of pile of horse droppings he was about to wade into.

"Merlin, mate," Gwaine said seriously, "we _need_ this."

And so Merlin bit his tongue and held back all of his feeble protests and reservations and the two went off. The truth was, Merlin was worried about the Knight. Gwaine needed excitement, but more than that, he needed purpose, and by purpose he meant something more than just studying history and the lay of the land. Therefore, if Merlin could not yet give him one, he could at least do his best to occasionally provide the other, if only so that look of wanderlust in the Knight's eye would be damped down a bit. That Gwaine was worried about him in turn didn't occur to him, but the fact was they hadn't had a night out with just the two of them since their days in Camelot and so Merlin's reluctance died pretty quickly.

_-x-_

Somehow, they found themselves on a coach to Birmingham. Once there, they let loose - there was the kissing of girls and parades and gambling and cheering both sides of a local football match in the street, while Merlin (almost certainly unwisely) introduced Gwaine "the man Guinness" as well as Mr. Jameson (whiskey), Mr. Jim Beam, Mr. Johnny Walker and even Captain Morgan. By the time they stumbled into a karaoke bar, they were well primed. The landlord, who was about as Irish as a 1950's Disney leprechaun, had them up singing "Danny Boy" and "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling" to the entire gathering.

Later, once they'd mellowed to the schmaltzy part of drunkenness, there was the catching up of two friends:

"It's true! I once made an Emperor swineherd of Bulgaria!" Merlin insisted. "Wait, no, other way round... I made the Bulgarian the Emperor of Swineherd! Yes, yes, that's it!"*

"Bollocks, you did!" Gwaine shouted, fairly impressed.

"I did, I did. Ivanho... no, Ilo, no wait... Any case, I told the prat that *hic* once when he was going on 'bout royal bloodlines and proper breeding or some other load of rubbish. But the best thing was that Gwen was shtanding," Merlin tried again, "_standing_ just behind him. She shaid, 'I feel I should 'mind you, Arthur _dear_ - NO! RE! REmind you - that a blacksmith's daughter ruled your poxy kingdom for far longer than you ever did!' "

"Lizzen, is that when Arfur, Arker, when Princess had to sleep on the floor fer a week?"

"Yep... Boy, yer drunk, my friend. Yer swaying like the Tower of Pizza 'bout to fall."

"The what?"

"Pisa. Leeza. Mona Leeezzzzaaa."

"I only look like I'm swaying cause yer swaying!"

"Don't be supid. Shtupid. Foolish. I don't get drunk 'less I want to. Spent whole flipping lifetimes bloody drunk. That's what happened with the shwine, swine... pig farmer. Was coming off a twenty year bender - take that you lightweight!" Merlin pointed at his friend while laughing uproariously. "Made him blashted Emperor before I knew what... what I was doin'. That and that thing with the horses! Bloody hell, but horses are damned boring conlervationsts... converlationists... talkers!"

Gwaine furrowed his brow; there was a clue there he should be paying attention to, he felt, but he couldn't figure out what it was. "Any road, mate, did you have fun today?"

"I had SOOOOOO much fun! This was the best idea ever, you... you! Should be celebrating you, that's what! St. Gwaine!"

"I'll bloody drink to that! St. Gwaine's day!"

Merlin raised his glass. "All hail St. Gwaine's day!"

_-x-_

Hours later, when he'd been tucked up in his bed by a grumbling Percival, a memory ghosted across Gwaine's mind. _Whole lifetimes drunk? _

Merlin, meanwhile, had no regrets until the next day when he spotted the tabloids at the market, cover pages emblazoned with tales of talking horses.

"Oh, Gods, not again!" he moaned.

**.**

* * *

_* This is a real thing. In 1275? a swineherd named Ivaylo worked his way into becoming Emperor of Bulgaria. I'm hoping to do a drabble about this story later on. _

_Thanks again to all of my reviewers, especially Ash9 - never have I had so many emails at one time and had them ALL been reviews! I loved it!_


	18. Not the Ubiquitous Hoodie

**Not the Ubiquitous Hoodie**

**.**

* * *

**.**

One of the mistakes Merlin kept falling prey to when trying to acquaint the newly arisen Round Table with the modern world was assuming they would understand things right from the first explanation.

For instance, initially his friends seemed to have little problem with modern attire - jeans and long-sleeved tees not being that far off from breeches and tunics, after all. Certainly they looked a trifle askance at the canvas trainers he gave them to wear on their feet, but, apart from that, dragging Gaius out of his robes and getting Gwen over the constant blush on her face at showing her bare calves in a skirt (as well as Arthur's possessive reaction to same) seemed to be the warlock's biggest hurdles.

Well, at least that was what he thought until he caught Arthur planning to go into the village wearing his hauberk and bevor over a red top Merlin knew said, "Come to London!"

"What does this emblem represent, Merlin?" Arthur asked, pointing a thumb chestwards to indicate the picture hidden by his mail shirt. "Is it your coat of arms?"

Merlin's sholders slumped a tad as the entirety of the problem began to sink in. It struck him that bringing his friends up to speed wasn't just going to be about tossing something at them with a quick one-off lesson, but making sure they understood the context that came with it. As he tried to get Arthur to take his scabbard and sword off ("I know you're King, prat, but we're only buying some chops for dinner!"), he suddenly grasped that, to Arthur, wearing his armour over his modern clothes would seem perfectly natural. There was no conception in the King's head that the two elements wouldn't go perfectly well together, not to mention how inconceivable the idea would be to him that upper class men didn't wear armour anymore. It was even possible, Merlin reflected, that Arthur was unaware fashions changed at all; before the Renaissance, people didn't understand that the past hadn't been exactly like their own time.

So, as the weeks and months went on, Merlin tried to explain the best he could (never having dreamed in the nearly fifteen hundred years leading up to this point that he'd be giving lectures on haute couture), which lead to him going into the attic one day and digging out an old suit of evening dress. Sprucing the "white tie and tails" up with a quick wave of his hand - restoring the fabric to its newest black, putting a gleam to the buttons of the waistcoat, repairing the worn parts of the stiff wing collar - he walked into the kitchen in full display, standing tall.

Only to be met with the sound of six buffoons howling with laughter.

"What is _that_?" Arthur demanded with a snort.

"Oh, don't you look pretty with your little neck bow!" Gwaine taunted, pulling at Merlin's white silk bow tie. "Just like some tiny maid's dolled-up pup!"

Even Lancelot, the constant noble gentlemen, was having a hard time keeping his mouth from twitching. "It's not...well, it's not very colorful, is it? Shouldn't dress clothes be more..._splendid_?"

"Not every era was into being as gaudy as possible," Merlin replied tartly.

"And how would you fight in such garb?" a snickering Elyan wanted to know.

"For six nobles, you lot have surprisingly little knowledge about _class_," the warlock argued back.

His audience hooted. "Seriously though, Merlin," Arthur scoffed, "Why in the world would anyone sensible ever wear such an outlandish set of clothes?"

Merlin had a sharp retort on his lips when suddenly Gwen walked in.

"Oh, there you all..." She stopped and regarded Merlin. "_Oh_," she repeated, but with a rather noticeable difference in tone.

As her husband, brother and friends gaped, Gwen's stunned eyes travelled down Merlin's sleek form from top to bottom, a most definite look of appreciation on her face. She blinked and Arthur would have sworn her breath hitched a little. "Merlin...you look...Oh, my!"

Arthur stepped towards her. "Gwen?"

"Yes, Arthur?" she answered distractedly, her eyes never leaving Merlin as she bit her lower lip and appreciation transformed into a gaze of outright womanly speculation.

"Gwen!" Arthur cried again.

Gwen didn't seem to hear him. Another deep breath raised her bosom quite fetchingly. "Merlin, you look... Mmm, yes..._well now.._."

Arthur rapidly grabbed her arm and pulled her out of the room, while her attention remained locked on her examination of Merlin as she stared back over her shoulder.

Merlin turned to the still open-mouthed spectators. "And _that_, my friends, is why you wear an outfit like this," he informed them smugly.

Needless to say, six white tie ensembles were swiftly requested, and, Merlin, being the generous individual he was, promptly acquiesced.

However, he realized he still had many lessons to teach when he caught the knights wearing their new tailsuits to go round the village shops on a Sunday afternoon.

.

* * *

_Author's note:_

_Well, there you go. I actually had a sad piece planned for today, but after FINALLY seeing the series finale I was incredibly depressed and decided to go for a pick-me-up instead. I hope no one takes the title the wrong way; I don't mind the hoodie, but today's a special day for me and so I wanted to dress the knights up all fancy! _


	19. Planes, Trains and Automobiles 1

**Planes, Trains and Automobiles**

**Part 1**

**.**

* * *

**.**

"_NO HORSES?__"_

"Not a one."

"You're being serious? No horses. None."

"I'm afraid not."

"That's preposterous! What do you mean you don't have any horses?!" Arthur was so taken aback by this he didn't even seem to care that his sudden stop caused Merlin to walk right into him. The warlock, who had been in the midst of giving the newly arisen King a tour of his house and grounds, would have sympathized more if Arthur had not five minutes previously asked him who his master was, completely unable to conceive that Merlin could have afforded such a fine "manor" on his own.

"I mean just that - I don't have any horses."

"But what proper household doesn't have horses?" Arthur demanded. "And how will the knights and I travel? Are we expected to ride donkeys or mules? What kind of King or knight will we look like astride some common ass?"

Merlin rolled his eyes, _No thought to my reputation, then. _"Well, you've got me there - an ass riding an ass does seem unworkable, logistically speaking at least."

Arthur went on as if he hadn't heard his former servant. "And how are we going to do battle in this coming war without horses?"

"Don't worry, prat. If worse comes to worse, I'll hire someone to walk behind you banging two coconut halves together," the warlock said without thinking.

Arthur's brow furrowed in puzzlement. "What's a coconut, Merlin? And why would I want someone behind me banging two halves of them together? It sounds awful, not to mention inconvenient. How would I hunt with that kind of racket? Have you finally been stricken with that mental affliction we all knew you'd get sooner or later?"

_I wonder how the prophecy would work if he was the Once and Future Baboon? _Merlin pondered to himself.

"It's not important, Clotpole. Anyway, most people don't have horses nowadays. We use something called the automobile to get around."

"Au - to- mo- bile," Arthur repeated the unfamiliar word, finding it a bit dubious. "And what manner of thing is that, then?"

"It's sort of a carriage that can move by itself."

"If it can move by itself, how do you control it? How do you stop it from running amok and knocking down innocent people?"

Arthur's conclusion threw Merlin momentarily off-step. He didn't know whether to laugh or cry; the King's misunderstanding was comical, but also filled Merlin with a sudden realization of just how alien this world was going to be to his friends.

"I'm sorry, Arthur. I didn't mean it could move of its own volition, as if it had a mind of its own, I only meant that it doesn't need an outside force to pull it, like a horse or team of oxen. It's propelled by a thing called an 'engine' which sits inside of it, but I have still have to _drive_ it, otherwise it doesn't move. Well, it could roll if it was on a hill and I left the brakes off, but... uh, well maybe it would be easier if I simply showed you. Would you like to go for a ride?"

"All right," Arthur agreed and so the pair finished their stroll across the lawn and headed towards Merlin's garage.

Merlin lifted the garage door and nodded towards the inside. "Well, there it is."

Arthur examined the vehicle, which was a dark blue convertible. Merlin could tell the other man had no idea at all of what to make of it, but didn't want to look foolish, so he forgave Arthur for his haughty pronouncement that it "didn't look very big to him."

Merlin sighed. "Actually, you're right. I didn't see the others coming back, so I didn't worry about it. But we're going to need something quite a bit larger if we're all to go anywhere together."

"Still though," Arthur began, possessing at least enough sensitivity to worry that he may have just inadvertently wounded his friend, "I'm sure it's quite a fine… uh, thing. And you and I could go for a ride."

"Of course," Merlin laughed, not at all put out. "It's a nice morning, what's say we leave the top down."

"If you wish, Merlin."

_-x-_

After a few glitches, such as getting Arthur to buckle up, and the King's sudden start of fear ("It merely took me off guard, _Mer_lin!") when the car "came to life", the ride was a huge success. Merlin stuck mostly to the country back lanes, not wanting to overwhelm Arthur with too many visions of the present just yet, but he did let loose once on the motorway just to give Arthur an idea of how fast the auto could really travel. To his immense pleasure, he caught the King laughing like a little boy.

"This is wonderful, Merlin!" Arthur shouted. "And this road! It's better than a Roman road! How did they get it so smooth and flat?"

"All it good time, my King," the warlock chuckled in return.

The sky eventually clouded over however, and, after turning off onto another country lane, Merlin stopped at a lay-by and put up the roof. Arthur jumped in surprise as the rag top began to rise behind him all by itself, like a snake slowly lifting itself from the ground. "Is it magic?" he asked.

"No. It's mechanical."

Arthur didn't understand, but let it go. They decided to turn back, reckoning the others would be wondering where they'd got to by now.

Still feeling encouraged at Arthur's embrace of one technological marvel, Merlin was completely unprepared for the attack that met him when he pulled the car into his drive.

The _literal_ attack.

Elyan leaped out shouting and screaming from the right as they passed the hedge wall that encircled the property and swung his sword down at Merlin, crumpling the rag top above the man's head and nearly striking him. Merlin's shock was so great that it barely penetrated that the sounds of chaos to his left was Leon was doing the same on Arthur's side while the King shouted at him. Merlin sped up to get away from the pair, only to nearly run down a charging Lancelot and Gwaine. Swerving desperately, he pulled the vehicle to the right and then had to turn sharply yet again to avoid Percival, who hit the bonnet with an axe. Merlin braked, but not in time to avoid going over the largest root of his oak tree. The car bounced and shuddered roughly and Merlin felt something breaking. _Gods, there goes the suspension! _he cursed, and then cursed again as the left side of the car scraped against the tree and they finally came to a stop. And then if that wasn't enough, Gaius and Gwen came rushing at him throwing fist sized rocks at the vehicle. Several bounced off the bonnet while Merlin shouted for them to stop before they could smash the windscreen.

"_NO! What are you doing?__"_

"Don't worry, Merlin! We'll get you out of that beast's belly!" Gwaine yelled as he stuck his sword down the now sizeable gap between the roof and the car door, as if he was going to pry his friend free. The other knights continued to hack away at the car, aiming to get closer to the King.

Merlin managed to open the door and push his way out before getting gored by the tip of Gwaine's sword. "STOP!" he ordered in his dragonlord voice, stunning everyone to stillness. Eight gaping faces met his, since, with the exception of Lancelot, none of them had ever heard that volume from him before.

"Stop!" he repeated more weakly, the sudden and unwarranted destruction of his car draining the fight out of him. "You've got it all wrong!"

Arthur, unable to get out of his side due to the oak tree being hard against the passenger side door, scrambled delicately over the gear shift and got out Merlin's side.

Merlin sank down, collapsing to sit cross-legged on the lawn, and covered his face with his hands in despair.

Arthur awkwardly patted the top of his friend's head. "Well, look at it this way, Merlin," he winced sympathetically, "You did say we would need something larger to fit us all. So now you have the perfect excuse to get a more extravagant carriage without looking vulgar!"

Merlin just whimpered, wondering how in the name of all the Gods he was going to explain sword strikes to his mechanic.

.

* * *

_Awww, poor Merlin. I didn't mean to be so rough on him, but apparently today was a day for evilness. Any ideas on how the group can make it up to him?_


	20. Molly

**Molly**

**.**

* * *

**.**

Arthur didn't know if it was the voice which had stopped him, or the fact that he'd come on it so unexpectedly. He'd known the path eventually came out onto the little park next to the square in the village, but lost in his own thoughts as he walked he hadn't imagined he'd come so far.

"_You gotta hold on, hold on through the night_

_Hang on, things will be all right_

_Even when it__'__s dark_

_And not a bit of sparkling_

_Sing-song sunshine from above_

_Spreading rays of sunny love,__"_

Coming to a halt on the other side of a bit of stone wall, hidden by a small grove of trees, the first thing Arthur realized was that the singer had been going on for a few minutes already and he hadn't noticed. The second was that the song was accompanied by the sound of a baby's cry. Arthur grimaced with sympathy; though he had next to no experience with infants, he instinctively sensed from the slight desperation in the singer's voice that his attempts to be both soothing and yet loud enough to distract the child weren't working in either capacity.

But the singer went gamely on:

"_Just hang on, hang to the vine_

_Stay on, soon you__'__ll be divine,__"_

Wait, that voice sounded familiar…

"_If you start to cry, look up to the sky,__"_

Was that MERLIN_?_

"_Something__'__s coming up ahead_

_To turn your tears - __"_

A shriek followed by another round of wails cut through the air, louder this time, and the singer broke off with an audible wince. "What's the matter, Charlie mate?" it said, and _yes, it was Merlin! _Arthur realized with glee.

"Why so fussy, eh?" Merlin went on. "That's not like you. Hmm, well, you don't need changing. And you don't seem to want to eat. Is it the song? But Mummy said it's your very favourite. Aw, but maybe it needs to be Mummy's voice doing the singing? Is that it?"

Arthur edged forward a couple of steps and peeked round. He recognized Merlin's little house guest from before, sitting in a - what did Merlin call it? A push-chair? - and saw that the tiny mite seemed to be dreadfully upset about something. The poor little lad's face was scrunched up and red and tears flowed in a steady stream down his cheeks. As for Merlin, Arthur could only see the back of him, yet from the tilt of the warlock's head he could picture the examining eye he was giving the boy.

"Ahh, now, is that the problem, little man?" Arthur overheard his friend softly ask the child. "Are you teething? Well, let's see what Uncle Martin can do about that, eh?" As Arthur watched, Merlin ran the back of his fingers gently against little Charlie's jaw line, and Arthur didn't have to see the man's eyes to know they'd flashed gold. The Once and Future King nearly chuckled as the baby's wails almost instantly slowed to hiccupping sobs, then tapered off to worried sniffles. "Mmmmhah," the baby burbled, wet lip and chin wobbling up and down as if too scared to believe the pain was really gone.

"I bet that's a little better now, isn't it?" Merlin said. A final sniffle and a happy jiggle of the head from the baby was his answer. "So what do you say to a little something to eat now?"

Charlie appeared to be more interested in trying to squirm out of his push-chair by lolling bonelessly to the side, but Merlin dug a small jar and a miniature spoon out of garishly coloured bag sitting on the bench behind him. As the warlock turned, Arthur stepped back; he didn't know why, but he didn't want Merlin to see him. When Merlin turned back to the baby, Arthur leaned forward again.

Arthur smiled as Merlin vainly attempted to get a reluctant Charlie to open his mouth. Whether the baby didn't want to risk the pain of eating despite feeling better or whether he was just wanting to play, Arthur didn't know, but as long as the boy was giving Merlin a hard time where he could watch, he was happy.

Oblivious to his audience, Merlin sighed. "Hmmm, how about another song then, eh Charlie? Will you eat if I sing something else to you?"

_Oh, please do, _Arthur thought. _I can__'__t wait to hear this!_

"All right, I've got one." Merlin began to sing:

"_Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high_

_There__'__s a land that I__'__ve heard of once in a lullaby_

_Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue_

_And the dreams that you dare to dream,_

_Really do come true,__"_

But at the sound of Merlin's voice, Arthur's mood began to change. There was something so wistful and sad in his friend's tone that suddenly teasing him about this later seemed… wrong somehow.

"_Someday I__'__ll wish upon a star _

_And wake up where the clouds are far behind me_

_Where troubles melt like lemon drops,_

_High above the chimney tops,_

_That__'__s where you__'__ll find me,__"_

"Ha, now. You like that one, do you?" Merlin said happily and snuck a smooth spoonful into Charlie's open mouth before the baby knew what was happening. Arthur saw Charlie's little rosebud lips working in and out as he mouthed the mushy slop, but his wide baby eyes were locked on Merlin. It was such an appealing sight that even the battle-hardened King couldn't resist and he was about come out from his hiding place and join the pair when Merlin said something strange, "My Molly liked that one too."

_Molly? Who__'__s Molly? _Arthur wondered. Oddly, he found himself shifting on his feet, suddenly wanting to pull away for reasons he couldn't begin to dream of.

"She looked like you as well," Merlin prattled on as he fed Charlie another spoonful. "She had beautiful light reddish hair, our Molly. We used to call her 'Strawberry'. Our perfect little Strawberry…

"And she had my eyes. Strangely, not many of them did, but there was no mistaking it with her, no sir."

Arthur's chest hurt. His_ eyes? How__…_

_Gods, did he have a child?_

"She was about your age when the movie came out. Not that she ever saw it at the cinema - she was too young - but she used to listen with such a look of enchantment on her face whenever that song was played on the wireless." Merlin sighed and his voice sounded far away. "I think I could've spent the rest of my life just staring at that expression…

"So I used to sing it to her at night as she fussed in her cot," the warlock went on, talking to Charlie once more. "Every night. Except that night for some reason. That night - "

Something clenched between Arthur's ribs at the way Merlin broke off. Despair and anger pricked hotly at his eyes as he saw Merlin shake himself and pull up straight. He heard Merlin swallow hard around a lump - a lump he felt in his own throat - just before Merlin began again in a too bright voice. "Well now, no need to talk about that, is there?" he asked the baby. "Gods, but these peas are horrid looking stuff, Charlie my boy!"

"Martin!" a woman's voice suddenly called from the direction of the high street. A young lady came up to the dark-haired man and his charge, and, from the way she squatted to check on Charlie and wiped the dribbled green mush running down his chin, Arthur guessed this was Merlin's friend Susan, the boy's mother. He managed to hear Merlin ask the woman how her meeting with her bank manager had gone before Merlin stood and the two walked off, continuing to chat away, with Susan pushing Charlie in front of her.

Arthur turned back the way he'd come. Before he returned home he wept without realizing it, but it didn't lift the new weight from his heart.

.

* * *

_The songs:  
_

_**Hang On, Little Tomato **_- written and composed by Thomas Lauderdale, China Forbes and Patrick Abbey from the band Pink Martini, and performed by them.

_**Over the Rainbow **_- music by Harold Arlen and lyrics by E.Y. Harburg, originally sung by Judy Garland in "The Wizard of Oz", 1939.

_Anyway, so sad to bring you down if you were in a good mood. I blame Charlie, myself. Apparently, he's the adorable, magic little elf who makes Kings and Queens eavesdrop and then feel sad. What a rotten superpower to have! But at least Arthur has finally gotten one tiny glimpse of something Merlin's been through while waiting for him._

_My continuing thanks to all of my readers! Hope April treats you well - it was snowing here! _


	21. For One Brief, Shining Moment

_Disclaimer: I think you can assume I don__'__t own Merlin, but I__'__m putting this here to say that I also don__'__t own Sey and Sissy Ola. (BBC fans, try to guess where they__'__re from!) I also don__'__t own a car, land or a dog, which probably makes as little sense in terms of legalities to tell you as any disclaimer, but I like doing it because I don__'__t like claiming other people__'__s works as my own._

**For One Brief, Shining Moment**

**.**

* * *

**.**

**November 22, 1963 **

**Finsbury, London**

Merlin was whistling to himself and doing up some chips on the burner when he heard it. In the background, his new suit jacket - for which he'd got more than a few jibes for at work for his new "mod" look - lay draped over the back of the chesterfield, while on the telly Harry Worth competed to be heard over The Rooftop Singers' "Walk Right In" coming from Mrs. Ola's phonograph next door. Content in his warm, homey little bed-sit, safe from the increasing wind outside, the slight mystery he'd had on the bus of a middle-aged woman with a dull coat, a frumpy hat and a bag of groceries and a look of absolute shock on her face, rushing not towards the stop but to a cluster of other people chattering intently in front of the stationer's, had already been forgot. Truthfully, it'd been forgot the moment the clippie had distracted him by asking for his fare. Tomorrow was his half-day and he was looking forward to the debut of the new programme they'd been working on at the studio, set for Saturday evening. (1)

Now he was just tugging off his tie when a sudden silence from the television penetrated his consciousness. He had a vague notion Harry Worth had given way to something about fish and later "Britten At Fifty", but this made him turn to look. Switching off the hot plate, though his chips were only half done, he moved closer towards the television as the BBC graphic came up and then the screen switched to a dark-haired man.

"**The death of John F. Kennedy happened in Dallas at twenty-five past twelve, in our time twenty-five past six this evening. Thirty-five minutes later, President Kennedy was dead. Half an hour later still, the United States had a new President, the newly sworn in Vice President, Lyndon Johnson,****" **a newsreader - Merlin thought his name was John Roberts - reported.

Merlin staggered to the chesterfield and sat down hard.

"**The diary of disaster began with the very credible agency message that President Kennedy had been shot, time 6.42,****" **the newsreader continued as a copy of a telegram from Reuters flashed on the screen. **"****He and his wife Jackie, and the governor of Texas, John B. Connally, were driving through Dallas in the big Presidential limousine, ****usually bullet proof, but this time vulnerable. The transparent hood had been taken down to give the Texans a better view. One man on the fifth floor of an office building had a view already improved by the telescopic site on his Mauser Army rifle. He****'****d sat there for some time while the work of the building went on above and below him. He****'****d even fried chicken while he****'****d waited. At one o****'****clock, with the President emerging into view from an underpass, he fired three shots. One bullet took the President in the head - ****"** (2)

At the phrase 'in the head', Merlin couldn't take anymore and lunged forward, turning the dial of the set so roughly it came off in his hand. Slapping a hand to his mouth, he barely managed to hold in a moan of horror while the incongruous sounds of Cilla Black singing "Love of the Loved" poured in from next door.

_-x-_

Everyone was shaken in their own ways. Sey Ola, convinced his presence as a coloured man would only hurt his wife's chances of being welcomed in an air-raid shelter, cornered Merlin in the corridor while Sissy was putting the kettle on and made him swear to get her to safety in the event of the "4-minute warning" going off. (3) Not an hour later, Merlin found Sissy in the floor's shared lavatory while Sey had run out for the evening paper, weeping because she was expecting and she didn't know what kind of world she was bringing a baby into when World War III was about to start. "And I want to stay with Sey!" she sobbed. "I won't go to the shelter without him! I won't! But then what will happen to the baby? Oh, Martin, _I don__'__t know what to do!__"_

But for Merlin, the pain was different. After having gone through two World Wars in the space of less than thirty years, and worse, seeing first hand what the Nazis had done to humanity with their concentration camps, Merlin had spent the last eighteen years telling himself that Arthur wasn't coming. The prophecy simply wasn't - _couldn__'__t be _- true. Not after all this time.

Not after Hitler.

But when he went to the Ola's that night and Sey - who looked ever so much like Elyan - opened the door, Merlin nearly blurted out, "Arthur's dead!" instead of Kennedy.

Because that was the nightmare that ran through his head all that desolate Friday night, not that Arthur wasn't coming, but that he _had_ come and Merlin had missed him.

_Kennedy,_ he reflected, _the charismatic war hero and anointed prince of old Joe Kennedy, leader of his nation, dynamic, fighting injustice, he and his beautiful wife both beloved by their people…_

What if Arthur had come back, just not as the Arthur he remembered? he asked himself. Was there anything in the prophecy that stated the King must come back to Avalon? To him? If his immortality was merely a side effect of the return of his powers in the Crystal Cave, was there anything that tied him to Arthur? His endless exile in the living world could just be a mocking and heart-rending coincidence, a massive joke of Destiny's. He certainly wouldn't put it past her.

Or…

_Or maybe I failed once more. Maybe I was supposed to search Arthur out. Maybe I wasn__'__t just meant to sit idly by and wait like the Gods__'__ own idiotic pawn, but to go out and actually _find _Arthur and help him shape the world. Maybe Kennedy _- Arthur - _died because I hadn__'__t been protecting him like I should have been._

"No!" he argued out loud, twisting and turning on his small fold-out bed in the early dark morning hours of the 23rd. "Kilgharrah said Arthur would arise at the time of _Albion__'__s _greatest need, not America's. It couldn't have been him! There's no reason to be worried over some silly notion, to become paranoid like a great big girl just because the man seized my imagination for a bit!"

_But Kilgharrah was hardly infallible, now was he? _Merlin's fear disputed back. _He was wrong about Aithusa, about pushing the need for Mordred__'__s death on you when Arthur was being judged by the Disir. And what if he was right, but couldn__'__t see it ALL? Maybe Kennedy leading American was what was supposed to save Albion. Maybe his would have been the presence to save us from Russia and their atom-bombs! _

_Gods, please no_, Merlin wept silently - at that moment no longer the ancient warlock but only the lonely young man battered by the centuries, laying curled in the darkness and clutching his bedclothes tightly to his face. _Please tell me I haven__'__t doomed Albion after all this time! I__'__ve never, ever wanted to hurt anyone! Please don__'__t let my mistake be the source of so much pain! Please don__'__t let me have failed again! How was I to know any better? How was I to know? _

Just then, softly, so softly, came the sound of music from next door:

"_When you walk through a storm_

_Hold your head up high_

_And don__'__t be afraid of the dark._

_At the end of a storm,_

_There__'__s a golden sky,_

_And a sweet silver song of a lark,_

_Walk on! Walk on! _

_With hope in your heart!_

_And you__'__ll never walk alone.__"__ (4)_

As Merlin listened to the low, sweet song, which was played again and again until daybreak, probably by Sissy, the cold hand around his heart eased its grip a little and hope made its slow way back.

.

* * *

_1) Sci-fi fans, can you guess which program?_

_2) This is taken word for word (including the redundancy of "The death happened" and then "Thirty-five minutes later he was dead") from a BBC News clip I found on Youtube. I don't think it was their first clip that night, but I couldn't find anything else. Most information and articles about that night are naturally more concerned with American broadcasts._

_3) Sey and Sissy Ola are from the BBC show "The Hour" and I snuck them in mainly because Adetomiwa Edun (Elyan) played Sey, and because it fit roughly the same time period. Also, please don't be offended by the phrase "coloured man" - at the time, that was the polite term. "Black" would have been considered offensive and Sey would probably not have called himself that._

_The 4-minute warning, conceived during the Cold War by the British Government, was a system meant to serve as a public warning in case of Soviet nuclear attack. The name refers to the supposed length of time (likely overly optimistic) it would take a missile to get to the UK._

_4) "You'll Never Walk Alone". Music by Richard Rodgers and Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. Originally written for the 1945 musical "Carousel", the version being used in this story was sung by Gerry and the Pacemakers. It fit rather conveniently for the ending, but it was in fact on the UK top 40 the week Kennedy died, as were the other two songs Sissy Ola played on her phonograph._

_Oh, and if you're wondering about the title, it comes from the musical Camelot, written and composed by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, and based on the novel "The Once and Future King" by T.H. White. The musical became associated with JFK's presidency after his death when Jackie Kennedy said that the cast recording was one of his favourites (though some think this story to be apocryphal), in particular the song that had these four lines:_

_Don__'__t let it be forgot_

_That once there was a spot_

_For one brief, shining moment_

_That was known as Camelot_


	22. The Un-Grey Man 1

_Disclaimer: I still don__'__t own Merlin (if I did, Season 5 would have been incredibly different), but since this chapter is a cross-over with the X-Files Season 6 episode __"__Tithonus__"__, I thought I__'__d add the disclaimer that I don__'__t own Mulder, Scully, Ritter or Alfred Fellig. _

**The Un-Grey Man**

**.**

* * *

**.**

He remembered the man.

_-x-_

**October 13, 1928**

**Woolworth Building**

**233 Broadway, Manhattan, New York City**

"G.B. Emmerson" was only a year old when he paid a dime for his near-death and became the 'Immortal Man' of Broadway. His tale became a wild sensation in a decade of wild sensations - papers for weeks afterwards daily updating the enthralled public on his condition and telling over and over again the story of the pickle seller from 13th Avenue and the kosher candy store owner who was cuckolding him with his flame-haired vamp of a wife, and how their knock-down, drag-out fight had caused the whole disaster to befall the innocent young Englishman - eventually becoming one of the most famous news stories of the Roaring Twenties.

But all of that meant little to the man in question. His own memories of that day were few, and focused on far different things.

_-x-_

Not ten minutes before it happened, Merlin had ridden the elevators of the limestone coloured building - first from the lobby, then the special lift for the last five floors to the Observation Deck - paying no attention at all to the squat, dark-haired man beside him, completely ignorant of the role the man was to play in his eventual discovery. Feeling strangely good that day, once the heavy oak doors had parted, he emerged into the open air high atop the world's tallest building with a laugh nearly bubbling out of his throat. Above, the sky was a soft blue, filled with thin, cottony clouds. Unable to contain his buoyant mood, he mischievously started whistling "Let's Misbehave" to the pretty red-head in the cloche hat standing just off to his left.

Seven minutes after that he was plummeting fifty-eight stories to the ground without any idea of what had happened. There'd been some sort of ruckus, then something heavy thumping into his back followed by a freakish push up and over the guardrail, and in less than a heartbeat he was falling down, down, down. Indeed, the whole event happened so quickly that Merlin, his brain having yet to catch up, could only wonder at the violent snapping of the corners of his open greatcoat as he fell to Earth.

_Surely the wind isn__'__t that strong today? _he asked himself rather foolishly.

He hit, his body reverberating as it ploughed through something sharp and hard, his spine breaking against what felt like a block of steel.

Despite his eardrums still vibrating from the explosive sound of his own impact, his next (and only) memory of after events was of prying open his eyes to find himself inexplicably half buried in the crumpled front end of some poor sap's Ford Model A, staring with utter confusion at the building in front of him. Standing in all of its neo-Gothic glory, like a cathedral stretched vertically, it pervaded his bleary, underwater-like consciousness as though it was some supernaturally imbued monolith passing judgement.

Sounds undulated in and out, washing over him. Voices screamed, hands frantically fussed at his clothes, the sky above shrunk to a small circle of blue as the heads of the gawking crowd crammed in around him, but only the building seemed real - until the man stood in front of him. Grizzled and balding, frumpy looking in a rough, down-and-out way, he stared at the blood streaming from the corner of Merlin's mouth with a puzzled pucker to his forehead.

"Why aren't you grey?" Merlin thought he heard the man demand before the world swam away.

_-x-_

**January 6****th****, 1999**

**Dean Street, Brooklyn, New York City**

A young man with blue eyes stood outside the run down, light tan bricked building, gazing up at where a death had taken place. A photographer had been shot the day before by an FBI agent, right through the lens of his camera, the shot powerful enough to go through both him and the female FBI agent who'd been standing behind him.

A grizzled and balding photographer, frumpy in a rough, down-and-out way.

Alfred Fellig hadn't aged a day in seventy-one years, but now he was dead.

Merlin didn't know what to make of that and so, preoccupied with trying to solve the mystery, he almost missed the brown-haired man staring intently at him from the rickety fire escape.

The ancient warlock recognized the look - the slight surprise, the almost visible racking of the brain as the person tried to place where he'd seen this face before, followed by the eyes widening in recognition - and knew it did not bode well for him.

He swiftly turned and walked away.

That night he left New York.

_-x-_

**February 20****th****, 1999**

**A cottage outside of Huntsville, Ontario, Canada**

It only took six weeks and three days for Merlin's prediction to come true: the brown-haired man had found him.

He'd considered waiting for the man in New York - he was not particularly frightened (it was extremely rare for him to be frightened by anything anymore), but merely wary of the potential obstacles that might be coming his way depending on what the man knew - but in the end, Merlin was glad he had come here. It had afforded him six weeks of peace and quiet, not to mention it allowed him to meet the brown-haired man on his own terms.

His hand was already on the doorknob as the knocked sounded. He opened it to see the brown-haired man shivering, hair and the shoulders of his overcoat soaked with snow.

"Martin Emmerson?" the man asked.

"Yes, that's me. Please come in, Agent Mulder."

"I'm sorry, do we know each other?" Mulder asked as he stamped the snow off his shoes and then stepped through.

"We've never met, if that's what you're asking. But as to whether we know each other, I suppose that remains to be seen."

"That's a bit enigmatic."

"Not really. You wouldn't have come all this way if you didn't think you knew something extraordinary about me. As for myself, well, there are such things as newspapers, Agent Mulder," Merlin replied, waving vaguely towards a copy of the New York Times sitting on the coffee table. "How is Agent Scully, by the way?"

"She's fully recovered and visiting her mother."

"I'm glad to hear it. A wound like that would have killed most people. Here, let me take your coat. And you might as well take off your shoes as well. You know, boots would have been far more practical."

"My drive up here was a spur of the moment thing."

"I see. Would you like something to drink? Coffee maybe?"Mulder nodded his thanks and Merlin directed him to sit in the living room. "So what can I do for you, Agent Mulder?" he called out from the kitchen.

"You could tell me how old you are."

Merlin didn't falter for a second. It was, after all, the question he'd been expecting. "I'm twenty-seven. My birthday is January 23rd, 1972, though I'm sure you could have found that out as easy as you found the address to this place. So what really has brought you all this way?"

"You tell me."

"You wish to ask me questions about the man killed on Dean Street. Alfred Fellig, I think the papers said his name was."

"It was _one _of them, at any rate."

"Milk or sugar?"

"Black's fine."

"So Fellig was an alias?" Merlin asked as he walked in with two cups and handed one to the Agent. "I wondered about that. Alfred Fellig, a crime scene photographer - so close to _Arthur _Fellig, the famous crime scene photographer from the 30s and 40s. Even their styles are the same. I considered the idea he might have been a relative, but still, it just felt wrong. Though why anyone would borrow another man's name and choose the Fellig part, I don't know. Why not be _Arthur _something? I've always been fond of Arthur."

"You should meet the Dales family," Agent Mulder said dryly. *

Merlin looked at him with confusion; it was the first thing Mulder had said that the warlock hadn't been expecting. "Pardon me?"

Agent Mulder waved it off. "It's not important. What I would like to know, Mr. Emmerson, is why you were standing outside of Fellig's apartment the day after he was killed."

"You think I killed him? I thought the paper said that it was an Agent named Ritter."

"No, I don't think you killed him, but I do think you knew something about him."

"And what's that, Agent?"

Mulder threw a very old file onto the coffee table. "The same thing he knew about you," he said. "I think the papers back then got it more right than they were aware of: you are indeed the Immortal Man."

.

* * *

* A little X-Files joke. The Dales family consisted of two brothers, a sister, and the family goldfish, all named "Arthur".

Other Notes:

- "_Let__'__s Misbehave__" _was a song by Cole Porter.

- The Woolworth Building was tallest in the world from 1913 to 1930. In a massive coincidence, it had its 100th anniversary the day before I started writing this, though I didn't know it until I looked the building up on Wikipedia for more information.

- Arthur Fellig was a real person and his name was used purposely in the original X-Files episode. Two more of Alfred Fellig's aliases were also in homage to famous photographers: Mathew Brady/Louis Brady and Paul Strand/Henry Strand.


	23. The Un-Grey Man 2

**The Un-Grey Man 2**

**.**

* * *

**.**

Merlin couldn't help it - he laughed. It started as a chuckle, then a snigger, and then suddenly it was a full, honest, open-mouthed laughing, bubbling out of him deep and rich. He glanced at his accuser; Mulder looked bored. _He thinks I__'__m trying to laugh the theory off as too preposterous to be believed, like some villain cornered by the detective in a bad tv show, _Merlin realized.

But that wasn't it at all.

An impossibly wide grin split Merlin's face as he looked Agent Fox Mulder straight in the eye and said, "Yes, as a matter of fact, I am."

Mulder, who had seen any number of extraordinary things in his bizarre career, was more surprised by the ease of the confession than by what it implied. "Really?"

Merlin nodded.

"Just like that? You're admitting to being immortal?"

"Not much point to denying it."

"If you don't mind my asking, why would you tell - "

"Simply because you _are _the first person who's ever asked. Plus, while I'm fairly good at hiding, I've never enjoyed outright lying. Let's face it too, you're either right or crazy, in which case you wouldn't believe me if I said no, and I'd be safer humouring you anyway." Merlin laughed again. "All this time… You know, I never thought being discovered would feel like this. Maybe it's relief, but I don't think so. It's more like…" Merlin pondered it for a moment, "more like _amusement_. And pleasure. I think I'm actually _pleased_ someone finally figured it out. I feel almost giddy."

"How much time?"

Merlin reached a hand out for the file on the table. "How about we start with this first?"

Mulder raised his hands as if to say, 'go ahead' and Merlin glanced through the contents of the folder.

"The Un-Grey Man?" Merlin read on the tab. He looked at the FBI agent. "Did Fellig make this file?"

"I found it in his apartment. The photos are how I recognized you on the street. Can you tell me what the name means?"

"Truthfully, I have no idea," Merlin admitted, as he pulled out records and old photos of himself. "I only know that when I first saw him, after I'd fallen back in '28, he stood over me and asked me why I wasn't grey."

"Did you ever see him again?"

"Not so close. I'd spot him watching me from a crowd every once and awhile, other times I would merely sense him."

"You could sense him?"

"I'd never run into anyone so old before. Anyone who might have been like me."

"Was he like you?"

"No. He was no different than you, just much older."

"We had an old Civil Service Exam he once took. He listed his birth date as April of 1849. He would have been one hundred and fifty if he'd lived another few months."

"Oh, I don't think that's true."

"What makes you say that?"

"Just a feeling. Did he tell you anything about himself?"

"My partner said he told some story about being sick during a cholera epidemic. When Death came for him, he closed his eyes and let his nurse be taken in his place."

Merlin thought back. "Fellig looked to be about sixty-five. If we assume he stopped aging when Death missed him, that would have been about 1914. I don't recall any cholera epidemics in New York in 1914. Did he give Agent Scully any other details?"

"Just that the city was burying people in Washington Square Park."

"Ah. That was mostly done before 1850, if I remember right. And the big cholera epidemic was in the 1790s, so - "

"How do you know those things?"

"It was fairly memorable, Agent, though plagues and epidemics do tend to run into one another after awhile."

"You were actually there?"

"Yes."

"So you must be fairly old yourself."

"Patience, Agent Mulder. We'll get to it in time. But the question was about Fellig and what 'grey' meant to him."

"Agent Ritter of the New York office first stumbled onto Fellig through his knack of showing up at crime scenes before the police arrived. Fellig told Scully that he could tell when someone was about to die - perhaps that was how," Mulder theorized.

"And so, when I fell nearly eight hundred feet and didn't turn grey - "

"It started him asking questions about you."

"I wonder why he never approached me."

"He wanted to die. Maybe he wondered what good another immortal man would be in giving him the answer."

"So how did he die in the end?"

"It's hard to say."

"I'm immortal, Agent Mulder," Merlin pointed out dryly. "If anyone can wait out an answer from you, it's me."

"Both Fellig and Agent Scully were shot. He told her to close her eyes. He died and she didn't. That's all we really know for certain."

"So he finally confronted Death. Literally. Well, it's as good an explanation as any, I suppose," Merlin agreed as he added an old promotional postcard from his days as the 'The Great Mysterioso' to the other items he'd laid out on the coffee table. "Hmm, now these do bring back memories." There were copies of his enlistment records from both 1914 and 1939, several press passes from his days as a reporter in the twenties, his picture in a newspaper from 1931 when he was giving testimony in a murder trial, a magazine article from the late seventies, a rare back cover photo for his first book from 1961 -

"_The Immortal Man _series, by G.B. Emmerson," Mulder said, interrupting Merlin's trip down memory lane. "Bit risky, wasn't it? Didn't you ever worry people would connect you to the man who fell from the Woolworth building? It had only been thirty-three years; most people would've still remembered."

Merlin shrugged. "If they did, they probably assumed I was the same G.B. Emmerson, simply older and making money off my own name."

"So that's why the books almost never had an author's photo? Because they might think it strange to see you looking so young?"

"No, the books almost never had a photo because science fiction was even more of the literary world's red-headed stepchild than it is today. Most of the series went straight to ten-cent paperbacks - the kind of book you could only find by digging through back-corner piles in musty used book shops. As for the photo, if they didn't assume I was _the_ G.B. Emmerson, they probably put me down as his son. People will explain an awful lot away all by themselves, if you just sit back and let them."

"Really?"

"Took me ages to learn it, but yes, really." Merlin sat back. "Now, Agent Mulder, tell me: why exactly are you here? It's been awhile since I've been a lawyer, but as far as I know, immortality isn't illegal. And even if it is, you haven't really got much of a case. These things are all very interesting, but there's nothing that would count as conclusive proof of anything. People are going to believe in Photoshop a hell of lot quicker than they'll believe in immortal beings."

"That's why I did a little digging myself," Mulder said, pulling another file out of his briefcase. He passed it to Merlin. Inside was a set of fingerprints, like the ones taken in any police station the world over, and a much newer form - a DNA analysis. "The fingerprints are from 1931, taken during the investigation that eventually led to the trial in the newspaper article Fellig collected. What do you want to bet that if I took your prints right now, the man born in 1972 would miraculously have the same prints as the man giving testimony forty-one years before he supposedly born?"

"That's still not going to convince most people," Merlin said. A smirk was dancing just behind his cheeks; Mulder didn't have the evidence he thought he had.

"The DNA report was on a section of liver taken during an operation in 1957. Again, long before you were supposedly born. Care to open your mouth and let me take a swab?"

Merlin leaned forward and opened his mouth. Mulder wasn't a man who expressed much emotion, but the warlock could tell he was slightly surprised.

"Well, Agent Mulder," Merlin said, leaning back once more, "here's the thing: your oldest evidence is from 1914. The age given on the enlistment form has "me" at eighteen, so that would make me what now? One hundred and three? Remarkable, perhaps, but not exactly impossible."

"A stunningly well-preserved one hundred and three," Mulder pointed out.

Merlin's eyes flashed gold and suddenly the FBI man found himself sitting across from a elderly man with long white hair and matching beard. Merlin quirked a wry eyebrow at his interrogator. "How about now?" he asked, rather smugly.

Mulder's eyes widened every so slightly. "Uh… that was quite an impressive trick."

"Throws a bit of a spanner into the works when it comes to proving your theory though, doesn't it? So I'll ask you again: why exactly are you here, Agent Mulder? I'm not about to let you haul me off to some secret government installation in order to be experimented on, nor am I going to let America - or any nation for that matter - turn me into a weapon. I suppose the worst you can do is to sell my story to the tabloids. Therefore, what is it that you want from me?"

"Only the truth."

"And what truth would that be?"

"Well, for a start, you never answered my questions as to how old you really are," Mulder said.

"I was born nearly fifteen centuries ago."

"Seriously?"

"You believe I'm _immortal_, but my actual age is too much to accept? You're definitely a strange mix of believer and skeptic, Agent Mulder."

"Where are you from?"

"Cornwall," Merlin stated matter-of-factly, taking a sip of his coffee. "What, were you expecting me to say Krypton?"

"So you're not an alien?"

"Certainly not!"

"So _what_ are you?"

"_Who_, Agent Mulder. The proper question is _who_. I'm not a thing, after all."

"My apologies."

"I should think so."

"You know, you're a lot more cranky like this," Mulder said, gesturing at Merlin's 'Dragoon' form.

"Odd. I usually feel more calm this way. But if you like…" Merlin changed back.

"All right then, _who _are you?" Mulder asked.

"I think I've given you a couple of clues already," Merlin said. "Let's see if you can work it out."

"Any particular reason you have to be so cryptic?"

"Actually, I think I'm just being unnecessarily evasive. However, if you truly want cryptic, ask a dragon."

"Dragon? Is that a reference to something?"

"Yes. To an over-sized, scaly lizard creature."

"Unh hunnnh."

"Seriously, you're the one who came here looking for an immortal man, yet _I__'__m_ the one who doesn't sound believable?"

"So help me out here," Mulder said, ignoring Merlin's comment. "Tell me who you are."

"Dragons, Cornwall, fifteen centuries, Arthur…" Merlin hinted. The warlock watched the gears turning in the agent's mind and saw the exact moment the answer slotted into to place.

"You're kidding, right? You're not actually telling me you're King Arthur?"

Merlin snorted. "No. No, most definitely not. In fact, he most likely would have had you in the stocks for even suggesting it."

"Then…" Mulder thought a little more. "_Merlin? _We're on the cusp of the twenty-first century, a brand spanking new millennium, and you expect me to believe you're Merlin, the wizard of King Arthur's court?"

"Well, it's warlock, and actually, Agent Mulder, I'd be tremendously relieved if you didn't believe me at all. More coffee?"

"No, thank you. So I don't suppose you could give me a demonstration of your magnificent power, could you?"

Merlin got up to take the cups into the kitchen. "I think you're forgetting who came looking for who. Or is it whom? Still…" He eyes flashed gold.

And suddenly photos and papers slid to the floor as the coffee table turned into a duck.

Mulder stared, but otherwise didn't react outwardly except to pull his legs away from the angry bird. "All right, that's… uh, I don't know what that is."

_QUACK! _

"It's a duck," Merlin told him helpfully.

"How do I know you didn't lace my coffee with some sort of hallucinogenic?" Mulder demanded, trying to maintain his calm while defending himself from the crazed water fowl currently trying to nip at his calves.

"I don't suppose you can. But I fail to see how exactly that's my problem," Merlin said from the kitchen sink, where he was rinsing out the mugs.

_QUACK! QUUUAAACK! QUACKQUACKQUACK!_

"Uh, could you get rid of this thing?" Mulder asked, almost begging.

"Of course." Merlin's eyes flashed again and the duck was gone. He sat back down on the couch, hands resting on his stomach, with a rather wry grin on his face.

Mulder breathed a sigh of relief. "So, you're…Merlin."

"Yes."

"I should have guessed that first - Merlin, Martin, they're both the names of birds."

"I would have thought Merlin being known for magic would have provided the better explanation for the freakish immortality thing, but what do I know? And I never thought of Martin also being the name of a bird - it just was the most convenient of the closest sounding names. Marvin, for instance, never really blended that well outside of the States. Or the 1950s, when you get down to it."

"Shouldn't you be older?"

"Excuse me? I'm nearly fifteen hundred years old, Agent. Why would I need to be older than that?"

"I meant _physically _older."

"Whatever for?" Merlin pretended to be genuinely puzzled.

"Well, Merlin is always portrayed - "

"Like this?" Merlin asked, changing back to Dragoon.

Mulder grimaced, then laughed at himself. "Yeah, that'd be it. So all the legends about the Round Table are true."

"Depends on which story you're talking about. I've never met any killer rabbits, for instance."

Mulder grinned. "No holy hand grenades then?"

Merlin chuckled. "Not a one." He was beginning to like the Agent, impertinent cabbage-head though the man was.

"But there was a real King Arthur?"

"Certainly."

"What was he like?"

Merlin's gaze took on a faraway look. "Bit of a clot pole, but a good man. A great man, really."

"Would you tell me about him?"

Merlin saw something in the Agent's face - a curiosity hidden behind all the dark memories and the drive for the truth and the sorrow, a little boy's curiosity that not even little boys seemed to have anymore - and so he began to tell the other man stories about boisterous knights and prattish princes and a beautiful blacksmith's daughter who became Queen, speaking till the first light of dawn began to cross the frozen lake outside. Eventually, however, he trailed off, his memories reasserting the weight they always left in the middle of his chest.

Mulder ran a profiler's eye over his companion; the man's loneliness was palpable. He nearly commented on it, but instead asked, "Tell me, in the books, whatever happens to the Immortal Man?"

Merlin looked at him.

"So far, he just keeps waiting."


	24. Planes, Trains and Automobiles 2

_Just a short one this time..._

**Planes, Trains and Automobiles 2 **

**.**

* * *

**.**

Once the members of the Round Table got over their initial shock and fear of 'wagons' that could move on their own (which Merlin had to admit did look very strange when he pictured it through their eyes), automobiles captivated Arthur and the knights, and even Gwen and Gaius were just as quick to beg for rides in the convertible once Merlin had magically repaired it.

And, of course, the leap from wanting to _ride_ to wanting to _drive_ was a short one.

Merlin did his best not to groan - he knew he'd eventually have to teach them all to drive, even if biting his own fingers off seemed like a better prospect. Elyan, who was fascinated by the mechanics, and Gwaine, who - despite not understanding twenty words of the language, the cultural references or even the basic societal dynamics - had somehow gleaned from adverts that automotive prowess would allow him to woo over women more effectively, were especially determined to learn and hounded him day and night. Gwaine even stepped up his efforts at learning to read once he was informed there was a written portion to test. He was diligent enough, but he struggled until Merlin bought him a stack of books - the sort of books which were most suitable to being carried home furtively in plain brown-paper bags.

Gwaine's eyebrow shot up nearly to Gaius levels at his first glance through; but a wild grin split his face barely a second or two later. "Merlin, you secret reprobate! I don't know what to say!"

"Don't mention it," the warlock told him. "Really. Never, _ever _talk about it again, in fact."

"Whatever you want, mate," Gwaine laughed.

"Fine. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go wash my hands for forty minutes and then spend the rest of the evening drinking in an effort to sterilize my brain."

However, despite the Round Table's studious new efforts, there were still the occasional misunderstandings. One day Merlin was about to set out to drive into the village to do the marketing when he caught the knights laying their palms on various spots of the convertible.

"Merlin," Gwaine asked, "Your carriage doesn't feel very warm to us. How "hot" does it have to get before it starts enchanting maidens?"

Merlin stared at them.

They stared at him.

He couldn't help it - suddenly Merlin started laughing so hard he fell against the car and then slid to the floor of the garage, helpless tears streaming down his cheeks. "Hot… hot doesn't… refer to temperature…" he breathlessly tried to explain, but he just couldn't get the words out.

Needless to say, the knights were all very put out and didn't talk to him for the entire rest of the day.


	25. Hobbies and Not So Epic Tales

**Hobbies and Not So Epic Tales**

**.**

* * *

**.**

Bored knights were a menace. It was to be expected they'd be at loose ends, Merlin supposed, especially once he'd put an end to 'sword cricket' and its evolutionary descendent 'sword ball', but some things were too much!

At first it was the questions: _Why do we have to learn how to use a fork when we eat so much take-away with our fingers, Merlin? Why do you drink milk, Merlin? Only infants do that! Why can we not have horses, Merlin? When can we go to the tavern, Merlin? Why does your house not have a moat, Merlin? What__'__s Victoria__'__s Secret, Merlin? It doesn__'__t look like she__'__d have much left to hide. Are jellybeans real beans, Merlin? What do you mean monarchs have no real power anymore and are mostly tourist attractions? And what _is_ a tourist attraction, _Mer_lin? _

However, as annoying as that got to be, it was almost worse when he left them to their own devices. He couldn't have a cold drink anymore because they kept stealing his ice cubes for rousing games of "How long can you hold your hand in an ice-filled jug for?" He got a bilious feeling every time he went to relax in his own sitting room because, amazed at the number of colours available at the paint store, they'd done his walls in stripes of seven vastly different hues. Another time, he'd gone to use his camera and found over six hundred badly framed pictures of Gwaine - blurry elbow here, shaggy chin there - apparently taken by the knight himself. And his phone bill shot into the stratosphere because they were steady making international calls. _How_ they'd learned to do that, Merlin didn't quite know, but as to _why_, he found out it was because they didn't believe him when he'd explained how other parts of the world were at different points in the day. It was their unshakeable belief that if it was night where they were, it was night everywhere, and hence the five phone calls to a funeral home in Tasmania made in order to check.

Finally, things came to a head not long after Arthur and the knights, decked in full regalia, came to him while he was sitting in the garden and reading, and told him they were going on a quest.

"A quest?" Merlin asked. "What sort of quest?"

"To rescue poor souls most horribly stranded in isolation," Arthur announced.

"Poor souls? What poor souls? What are you talking about?"

"That starved fellow in the red tunic and his crew-mates."

"Uh, you'll have to clarify that a touch more, Sire."

"The lost sailors and passengers of the valiant little ship _Minnow_," Leon added.

It took Merlin a few moments to place the name, but when he did, he had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. "Oh, Gilligan and the castaways! No, you see it's…" he trailed off, suddenly envisioning a few days of quiet. "You know, that's a very noble quest, my friends. A fine quest indeed."

"Merlin, are you suffering from some sort of affliction?"

"Why do you ask, Sire?"

"Your face is doing this… _thing_."

"Don't worry, it's nothing bashing my hand with a hammer a few times wouldn't cure. But getting back to this quest of yours, let me wish you the best of luck!"

"Don't you want to come with us?" Elyan asked.

"I would love to, but who knows what might happen while all the household's protectors are away? Therefore, I really think I'd better stay to watch over Gwen and Gaius."

Arthur rolled his eyes. "Of course you do, Merlin, you big girl's blouse! Fine, let's be off, men!" he exclaimed, waving them vaguely southwards.

"You need to go that way to get off the property," Merlin said helpfully, pointing towards the drive.

"We know _that_, Merlin!" Arthur said, quickly changing direction.

"Of course."

"And try not to be too much of an idiot while we're gone," Arthur called back as Merlin waved them goodbye.

"I'll do my very best, Sire," Merlin reassured him, his mouth twitching spasmodically as he tried to hold back the lunatic grin tugging at his cheek.

Four very relaxing days later, after he'd had the knights released from the psych ward of the hospital where they'd been held over night, he did his best to console them. "Oh, cheer up!" he said. "You did make it to Falmouth Harbour! That's quite impressive! And if you'd succeeded in commandeering that hotel's fleet of jet-skis, I'm certain you would have made it _all _the way! Still, it might be time for you lot to consider getting some proper hobbies, don't you think?"

.

* * *

_Truthfully, I'm not sure about this one. I originally wanted to do something different with the hobbies idea, but then this came out. Is it too silly?_


	26. We'll Meet Again

**We****'****ll Meet Again**

**.**

* * *

**.**

**June 27, 1945**

**British sector **

**Berlin, Germany **

The RAF man picked his way carefully through the rubble of Berlin. Here and there, a spectre - some shell-shocked native, still small looking despite the bulk of wearing every article of clothing they owned to save leaving the things behind to be plundered by thieves - could be found listlessly wandering down pulverized streets, disappearing and reappearing around the few lone walls still standing, oblivious to the scorch marks and the never-ending haze of soot and even the smell of the bodies still buried underneath the crumbled landscape. Every so often, he would hear the sounds of some brash young Yank from the occupying forces off on a souvenir hunt with his comrades, but for the most part Berlin was now an eerily silent world.

Which is how he supposed he heard the singing.

"_We__'__ll meet again_

_Don__'__t know where_

_Don__'__t know when_

_But I know we__'__ll meet again some sunny day__"*_

It lead him to the remains of what looked to be an old beer hall. Scrambling his way over a pile of debris just inside the door, the RAF man found himself in a large rectangular hall covered in wood panelling dark enough to be straight from the Black Forest, with floor and ceiling planks to match. He half expected to see a crowd of boorish lads singing the Horst Wessel song, stopping only long enough to mock the waiters in their lederhosen (or harass the waitresses in their dirndls) as steins of Löwenbrau and plates of pretzels, mustard and veal sausage were laid on the long wooden tables before them.

But now there was only one shattered English flyer, head down and arm wrapped around a nearly empty bottle of Schnapps, brokenly warbling for the empty room to _'__please say hello, to the folks that I know.__' _"

"Hate to break it to you, old son," the RAF man said, "but I reckon Vera Lynn isn't going to be quivering in her knickers at the thought of competition from the likes of you."

The singer's head wobbly head lifted from the table and swivelled upwards while bleary eyes did their best to focus. It took a few moments, but a wide, cheery smile flooded across the dark-haired man's face. "Harry!" he breathed out in wonder, then hiccupped. "Would you prefer '_I__'__ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts__' _then?"

"Bloody hell, Martin my lad, but it's good to see you!"

A sad, wistful look passed over the other man's features. "Is it?" he asked, as if puzzled by such an idea.

Squadron Leader Harry Caldwell bent down and picked an empty bottle of Kirschwasser off the floor. "Good God, man, you're not drinking this bilge?"

"All the good shtuff is already gone."

"Three sheets to the blooming wind, are you?"

"Rubbish," Martin protested with a dismissive wave. "Bit squiffy is all."

"Don't lie to me, sunshine," Harry said as he pulled a chair over and straddled it, digging into the pocket of his greatcoat for a packet of fags. He lit one and offered the pack to Martin, who declined. "You're so far under the surface you're about to come through to flipping Peking!"

"No, Harry," his friend said, suddenly sounding more worn down than any man Harry had ever heard before in his life (and, after six years of war, that was saying something). "No, I'm just… _tired_, you know? So damned tired."

"I know, Flight Lieutenant, I know," Harry said softly, hoping Martin's rank might penetrate through the man's blitzed senses and help him pull himself together. "James told me." Harry's brother was with the British 11th Armoured Division. They had liberated the stalag Martin had had the misfortune to end up at just a scant six months before the end and then had gone on to free the poor souls at one of Hitler's special internment camps.

A place called Bergen-Belsen.

When Harry had heard of Martin's capture, he'd penned a brief letter to his friend. "Spot of rum luck, that," he'd written, hiding his desperate concern and worry behind that fabled British stiff upper lip like every man jack of them did, but it had nearly destroyed him.

Martin was an odd bloke - inscrutable might be the word. The best pilot Harry had ever seen, and damned dependable to boot, he'd become absolutely invaluable to the young Squadron Leader with his calm, unruffled, seen-it-all-before way about him, but more than that, he'd easily become Harry's truest friend. However, there was something secretive about the man as well. Despite being worth any ten superior officers, Martin never put himself forward - never tried to rise higher than he was, never took the credit for all the things he did, never talked himself up like so many of the young lads did - and even to Harry, his background remained mostly a closed book. Still though, it was digging a hollow spot in Harry's chest to see his closest companion look as lost and broken as he did. In all the years they'd spent working together, training together, and practically living on top of one another, he'd never seen Martin resort to drink to cope with the war. Before, nothing had ever fazed the man, but now, spindly and drawn, he looked _diminished _somehow. Defeated.

"What did they do to you, Martin old mate?"

"Wasn't what they did to me that's important, Harry," Martin mumbled, his head dropping to the table once more. "The Stalag wasn't anything to what we saw after."

"James said it was… bad." His brother's lack of description had worried him; James had aspirations to authorial greatness and was, if anything, usually an overly effusive correspondent.

"It was."

"Can you tell me?" They'd all heard that BBC bloke on the wireless when the place was found, saying how the dead and dying lay out over an acre. And how it was almost impossible to tell which was which.

Martin lifted his tired head again to look him in the eye, and that's when Harry was struck by a most peculiar and disturbing sensation. He wouldn't even consciously register it until decades later, when, browsing through a book his grandson had left lying about on the side table, he read the description of the man from Betelgeuse who wrote tour guides about outer space and, in times of distress, would subliminally hit another person with the sense of the sheer distance he was from home. Harry, nearing seventy by that time, would for some inexplicable reason think, "No, not distance. _Age,__" _and then throw the book down before shakily going to fix a gin and tonic for himself.

"Harry," Martin said, staring at him with those despairing, terrible dark blue eyes that held infinity behind them, "I have seen many things. More than you can possibly imagine. I have seen wars and plagues and plundering invaders and hideous murders. I have seen people tortured, impaled, raped, drawn and quartered, keel-hauled, and hacked to death with axes and swords. I have seen rotting heads on spikes and people left to die in cages hanging from posts. I have seen slaughter like you cannot imagine.

"But I have never seen the cold, brutal callousness of this. The Nazis…" Suddenly, Martin let out one quick, strangled sob, and for the first time, despite that disturbing sensation of peering into the endless eons Harry got when looking at him, he seemed like the same frightened young man all of his squadron mates were. "They _industrialized _murder, Harry," he said. "Murder factories - that's what those places were. They made killing _efficient_. This wasn't about hate or rage or even gain. It was no less than the cold and banal and thoroughly, breathtakingly _inhuman _attempt to remove another group of people from the face of the Earth.

"The things I saw, Harry… I can't even tell you." Martin raised the bottle of schnapps he'd been cradling like a child with a teddy, tipped it back and emptied it. He swiped his sleeve across his mouth and Harry was pained to see there were desperate tears streaming from his eyes. "And the rest of them… claiming not to know. Wanting us to feel sorry for 'em! Gods, Harry, you could smell the bodies burning from two miles away!"

Harry didn't know what to say.

"Thousands, Harry. Thousands. The bodies were piled up like little hills. Human beings thrown out like rubbish at the community tip," Martin went on. "And how many more of these camps has that bastard Hitler got?"

Martin suddenly whipped the now empty bottle against the wall, where it smashed into a shower of tinkling pieces. _"__And still the bastard never came!__" _he shouted.

"Who?" Harry asked.

"You know what?" Martin demanded, swaying a bit now as he pointed a finger at Harry. "Maybe he shouldn't come."

"Who shouldn't come?"

"No one man should have that much power. No, sir. Leaves us all at the mercy of your Hitlers and Stalins and Napoleons. That's not right. You leave'em unchecked, with no one to say no to'em, and look what you get! The prat as a prat was bad enough, but look at his father. And me! Look at me! I did bad things. Terrible things! No one to bloody stop me, that was the problem. And look at the stuff I didn't do! Didn't stop this! Didn't know about it, it's true, but I could have put more blasted effort into finding out. But I was complacent. Thought I was already doing my bit._"_

Harry gave up and tugged at Martin's sleeve, deciding to take the drunken man back to his billet. "C'mon, old son, let's get you home so you can sleep it off. People are going to think you're balmy if you keep on spouting rubbish like this."

"See, the problem is," Martin went on as if Harry had never interrupted, "Is that, even if you had a good ruler, the best bloody sodding King in the world, what happens after he's gone I ask you? The position is still there, still with all of the power it entails, and open to every monster willing to grab hold of it. And it's hard to bring down a man with that much power once he's got his grubby hands on it."

"You planning on overthrowing the King, then?" Harry asked wearily, still trying to pull his friend to his feet.

" 'S what destiny wants, the bitch. But why? What's old George the sixth ever done to me? Why should I oust him for the prat, eh? Even if he had shown his stupid, fat face, which he didn't!"

"Good heavens, Martin, you're not serious?" Harry asked.

"Why not?" Martin said, completely misunderstanding Harry's worry over his talk of ousting the King. "You know, I've asked myself _when _he will return, and _if _he will return and even whether I _want _him to return, but I've never asked, '_Should_ he return?'"

Harry rolled his eyes and started tugging his friend towards the door again. "Come along, Flight Lieutenant, bit of a kip and you'll be right as rain in the morning. So don't make me search out some American MP to drag you back."

"I tell you in all seriousness, Harry, I can't help but think that when that silly sod finally rises from the lake, perhaps, just perhaps, the world would be better off if no one was there to meet him."

For the rest of his life, Harry Caldwell would never understand why this one simple statement muttered by a weeping, drunken man in a deserted German beer hall had filled him with such sorrow and fear.

.

* * *

_*"We'll Meet Again" Written and composed by Ross Parker and Hugh Charles and sung by British icon Vera Lynn, was released in 1939 and became one of the most famous songs of WWII._

_Oh, and if you're curious about the RAF ranks, Squadron Leader would have been analogous to a Major in the British Army, and a Flight Lieutenant (despite the title) about equal with a Captain._


End file.
